


The Discworld Atlas Tour

by femvimes



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aerial Combat, Gen, Hobbits, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Original Male Character(s) - Freeform, Politics, discworld atlas, mute character, swamp dragons, why am I doing this to myself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2019-11-13 06:17:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femvimes/pseuds/femvimes
Summary: While the Discworld books mainly focused on a few locations - Ankh-Morpork, the Ramtops, Uberwald, the Plains - there are sixty-eight countries in the Discworld Atlas. And for some reason, I'm choosing to write a story for every single one. This will be an anthology of short stories, one for each country. You'll see some familiar faces and some new creations too.





	1. Introduction

Three years ago, on a trip to London, I bought _The Compleat Discworld Atlas_ and my brain was set on fire. It just has so much _content_ , and most of it is new. Ripe for fanfiction, I thought. So my fiery brain came up with the wild idea to write one story set in each country on the Disc. I’ve been working on it off and on ever since then, and now that I actually have some content I’m willing to post, it’s high time I let it be publicly consumed.

You’ll see some familiar things in these stories, and some entirely new faces and places. We visited the Tezumen Empire back in _Eric_ and haven’t heard of it since. And though we never saw a book set in The Great Nef, I don’t know why because it’s literally the coolest concept I’ve ever heard?? I can’t wait to write about The Great Nef, y’all. Most of these stories are a repository for whatever I’m into at the time, so you’re gonna see some lady scientists, some Le Guin-inspired hobbits, a country that may or may not be Wakanda with a different name, more lady scientists, and just. So much gay.

This series will probably be updating very slowly, as my interest waxes and wanes. Every time I get into a new thing, though, I’ll hopefully write a story for the Disc inspired by it. Buckle in to your carriage seats, everybody, and let’s begin our tour.

 


	2. The Witches' Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our first country: The Land of Fog!

_Little is known about this group of islands located widdershins of Fourecks…Reports of a small pipe-smoking people with hairy feet are unsubstantiated. Inland the region is believed to have a mountainous terrain and a lot of sheep. – The Compleat Discworld Atlas_

 

The little people of the Land of Fog call themselves Havlings, and their island Havmore, because they have everything they could ever want: sheep and other animals their own size, and a fertile land. They might be seen as poor by other inhabitants of the Disc. Fortunately, they've never met any other inhabitants, so no one's told them.

They are an egalitarian society, as equal as any agrarian society with gender roles can be. Their country is really run by little old ladies who tell their sons what to do, as most countries are. They have just as many wizards and witches as other parts of the Disc, and slightly more magic. They are also one of the last places on the Disc where you can find natural dragons.* Again, no one's told them that they shouldn't have dragons, so the dragons stay. The Havlings would very much like the dragons to leave. All the setting fire to small farms and carrying off small sheep puts a damper on the Havlings' normally genial mood. No one quite knows where the dragons come from, just that every year there seem to be the same number flying around the island's central mountain. Visitors who sneak up and are not immediately detected and burnt to a crisp report that they never see any dragon eggs...

 

*Also of small stature, naturally.

 

In one of the coastal towns of Havmore lived two witches in what men call witch-marriage, and what the women just called marriage. Their names were Blackberry and Aria, and some years before this story they adopted a baby boy. He was unceremoniously dropped off in the village one night, and since the witches wanted children, they took him in and named him Tama. He was now a young lad who spent much of his time down with the fishermen.

One evening, as Aria went outside to call Tama in for supper, she instead saw the fisherman Kahu huffing his way up their hill. The witches lived on a grassy hill with the best view of the sea in town.* A witch's prerogative.

 

*Or at least, the best view when the coast wasn't covered in fog.

 

"It's your Tama, Goodwoman. He's been taken by a dragon."

Aria turned pale and ran inside without saying a word. The illusive dragons of Havmore may have been small, but they were still big enough to carry off a Havling child.

"What's wrong, love?" asked Blackberry as her wife threw on a shawl. She was armpits-deep in an herb drying project, part of the witches' specialty.

"A dragon has Tama," gasped Aria. Her chin tattoo stood out with the blood drained from her normally dark face. Blackberry jumped up and grabbed her own shawl. Aria usually yelled and carried on about mundane worries, so this under-reaction was a cause for concern. A dragon spontaneously appearing this close to the coast may have sounded unbelievable, but one thing Havlings don't have is much imagination. They would surely not mistake a passing bird of prey for a dragon.

The two women and Kahu ran down the hill as fast as their little legs would carry them. They raced through the town in seconds and pounded onto the docks. [room for more description here.] A group of fishermen stood with their nets abandoned, pointing upwards. The docks and town were in a bubble of warm light that kept the dark of the periwinkle sky at bay. Shielding their faces, the witch wives could just see the silhouette of a dragon circling the harbor.

"It doesn't look like it's carrying anything," Blackberry observed.

"Has he already been eaten?" Aria whispered, clutching her wife's arm. Blackberry patted her hand.

"Let's not jump to conclusions, love. You there!" she barked, pointing at random in the group of fishermen. "What did you see?"

"Oh, um..." The fisherman looked at his fellows for support. It wasn't wise to be on the bad side of a mother or witch, and a combination of the two could be positively lethal. "Your Tama were out in his own little skiff, sailin' round the harbor. We saw the dragon flyin' near there, and when the boat come back it were empty."

"Show us the skiff," Blackberry demanded. It was anchored just a few steps away. The witch wives knelt to inspect their son's boat. Some of the men had put it together for him out of scraps last summer. Despite the materials, it was well-made, with oar locks and a little awning to protect the sailor from the sun. Inside were Tama's fishing kit, and his dark-green cloak he was already outgrowing.

"No blood," Aria said with relief. She picked up the cloak and smelled her son's little-boy scent.

"Claw marks, though, look." Blackberry pointed to deep gouges on the interior wood work. She frowned. "I don't understand. What is a dragon doing this far from the mountain?"

The dragon swooped so low that the fishermen gave a collective cry and scattered. Aria and Blackberry stood firm. Or at least, Blackberry did, and Aria clung to her wife's strength. 

"Berry - " she said as the dragon came ever closer. They could see its glittering scales, its wide eyes, its magnificent talons. it opened its jaws wide.

"Muuuuuuuum!" it bellowed. At the last second, it pulled up and flew over the Havlings' heads. Its wake of air set their curling hair and clothes to dancing.

Aria and Blackberry stood, stunned, as the dragon wheeled in the air and started to come around again. Then Blackberry stamped her foot, waved her finger in the air, and shouted,

"Tama Keeti-Rakena, you stop this nonsense right now! Change back and come inside for dinner!"

The small green dragon - still large enough be intimidating - beat his wings and bellowed mournfully. His mothers watched him on the dock while behind them, the fishermen backed slowly off the pier. The witches seemed to have everything in hand now, and they could go home to their dinners.

"I don't think he knows how," said Aria sadly. She followed her son's path through the air. It was growing ever darker.

Blackberry looked around the pier and found two seabirds watching the show with interest. Maybe soon, someone would throw them some food.

"You see those two birds?" she squeezed Aria's hand and pointed to them. Aria saw the seabirds and groaned.

"Oh, Berry, not gulls. Their night vision is terrible."

"Lie down." Blackberry pulled her wife down onto the dock and they lay there side by side, staring up into the night sky. A few stars were coming out, and the moon hung swollen just above the hills. You could just barely see the dragon turning frantically in the air. The two witches fell asleep holding hands and seconds later, two seagulls took flight off the pier.

If you had night vision better than gulls and were standing on the pier, you could see the dragons joining the dragon in his flight and matching pace with him. At first he flapped his wings, trying to shake them off. They squawked and cried like they were having a conversation. Finally, the birds led him down to the dock, and he landed as gently as a new dragon is able in the water. Which is to say, with a great big splash.

Aria opened her eyes first, quick to separate her mind from that of the fish-obsessed seagull. Her dress was soaked, and she was lying in a puddle of displaced seawater. Ignoring her sodden clothing, she stood and cautiously touched the dragon's nose. He bent his head towards her. The small scales of his face were curiously soft. Blackberry stood at her side and stroked the dragon's whiskers.

"Oh, our Tama," Aria whispered. "How did this happen?" Witches knew the art of borrowing, and some wizards could turn into animals, though they weren't telling how. Tama's mothers had had their suspicions about him over the years. He had always been kind, but quick to anger, such as when he was teased about his mothers. They could see something fiery inside of him trying to get out.

"Soooorrrrry," he groaned, unable to make his voice quiet. His whiskers drooped and he sunk low in the harbor.

"Only be sorry if it was your fault, love," said Blackberry. She put her hands on her hips. "Now. You changed, so you can change back."

Tama swung his great head back and forth, and huge tears dripped down his shimmering scales. 

"Well, what's that supposed to mean?'

"It's generally accepted to mean 'no', Berry," said Aria gently. "I don't think he can. Poor lad doesn't know what's going on."

The family stood there, alone on the dock in the night. The lights of the town dotted the landscape behind them. The highest light was that of their own house, with dinner cooling on the table and the herb bundles half-tied. Aria began planning life with Tama as a dragon. He could sleep in the goat shed. They'd spend a fortune on feeding him, but at least Blackberry wouldn't have to mend his clothes anymore.

Aria's eyes lit up, and she looked around on the deck for where she'd dropped the cloak. She excitedly showed it to a bewildered Blackberry.

"Berry, remember the stories about the wizard who turned into a fox and couldn't turn back? What did they do for him?"

Blackberry realized Aria's plan, and took a handful of the cloak.

"Someone who loved him offered his clothes back to him. It's worth a try."

Together, the mothers held the cloak out to their dragon son. Hesitantly, delicately, Tama reached out a massive claw with two talons pinched together. It was a dark boy's hand that grasped the cloak. Then he shrieked and fell into the harbor. 

Aria and Blackberry hauled him out and wrapped him in his cloak. The waters of the harbor at night were not the welcoming waters Tama usually swam in, and he shivered as he cried. The three of them sank to their knees, hugging each other as they cried and laughed.

"Th-thank you," Tama chattered. "Oh, thank you. I didn't want to come down in case they thought I was attacking."

"But how did you do it?" Aria asked, drying his hair with a corner of the cloak.

"How did you get so big?" Blackberry pressed. She always wanted to know the ins and outs of a spell. Indeed, she would perform the same one over and over again until she knew it intimately. "Where did all the dragon come from? And where did it go?"

"It's in here, I think," said Tama. He put his hand on his bare chest. "It came from here. I was out on the water, and it was such a nice day. I thought, it wasn't right that I should be stuck in a boat. I wanted to Borrow a bird like you, but I didn't know how. Once I had that thought, something inside me got big. Then I started to get big, and I had to fly before I swamped my boat."

"What was being a dragon like?" Blackberry asked excitedly. She'd be trying to replicate the change herself for weeks. Most likely, the cause of Tama's transformation would be found in Tama's unknown parents. The second-best parents for a dragon boy, after actual dragons, were witches. Maybe all dragons were born human until they reached a certain age, when they heard the call of the mountain.

"It felt normal," said Tama, screwing up his face. "Like I'd been waiting to do it for forever. I couldn't change back until you gave me my cloak and I pictured getting small. I folded my dragon self back up inside my Havling self. Does that make sense?"

Aria and Blackberry looked at each other.

"Sort of," said Aria.

"Absolutely not," said Blackberry.

Tama got very serious. "Were my other parents dragons?"

Blackberry made eyes at Aria, who was better at this sort of thing. Aria said gently, even as she swelled with pride at Tama not having said "real parents",

"I think probably they were. I don't know how dragons raise their children. Maybe they always give them to Havlings to be raised."

"I don't want them to take me back!" Tama said hotly, temper threatening to spill over. "What did they ever do except abandon me?"

"It will be your choice, love," said Blackberry. "But no shouting. We'll have none of that, thank you. Your mum has made us all a nice dinner which is still waiting at home. Let's go eat."

"I'm starving!" declared Tama. And he would be, if he was eating for both Havling and dragon.

The family, witches and dragon boy, went back to their home at the top of the hill. As Tama slept in his own Havling-sized bed, he thought about the dragon inside him and vowed that if he had children, he would raise them like Mum and Mother, and never give them away to a stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since this country is an obvious New Zealand/Middle Earth insert, I just had to write about hobbits. Then I got into Le Guin and Earthsea and it all kind of snowballed from there. It made sense for the hobbits to be Maori-inspired. Aria and Blackberry won’t be our last gay couple on this tour.


	3. Helga and the Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the next stop on our tour, NoThingfjord!

_A Hubbish climate brings icy winters and short cool summers [to NoThingfjord]....Export of the Coathanger Elk and Hat Stand Reindeer...for use in home furnishings has now been banned, as has trade in the increasingly rare NoThingfjord Blue Swamp dragon, which fails to thrive when removed from its natural habitat. - The Compleat Discworld Atlas._

 

May 29, 1993

To Her Grace Lady Sybil Vimes, Ankh Morpork,

My name is Helga Larsdottir, and I am writing to you from NoThingfjord. We don't often get news of Ankh-Morpork up here, but when we get the mail I receive Swamp Dragon Monthly. That is when I first heard of you and the Sunshine Sanctuary. You see, I have my own sanctuary up here in Herrinsmelt for exclusively NoThingfjord Blues. The poor dears get brought to me out of the snow by hunters. Their natural home is the Atjafjatjaskatjakutl volcano, but one way or another, a few of them find their way down to town and into my sanctuary. 

I am writing to you not only because I am an admirer of yours. I wish to ask you some advice, since you've been running a sanctuary for much longer than me. (I'm only 25, you see.) Have you had much luck with releasing your healthier dragons back into the wild? I have a few little darlings who are well enough to go home, and I don't want to keep them cooped up in the sanctuary all winter. Not when they could be kidnapped and used to keep a family warm for months. It's a common problem I must deal with, Your Grace! Even worse, there isn't much fuel to be had here, so they end up burning their pilot lights out. I'd like to take them home while the trek up to Atjafjatjaskatjakutl is still safe. What do you think? Should I attempt this, or is it foolish to try and move them?

I am sending this in mid-spring in the hopes that your reply will reach me before the summer is out.

Respectfully yours, 

Helga Larsdottir,

Herrinsmelt, NoThingfjord

 

 

 

June 27, 1993

My dear Ms Larsdottir,

How delightful to receive your letter! I believe you are my farthest correspondent. An entire sanctuary for NoThingfjord Blues! I'd dearly love to see it someday. Truth be told, I had no idea that there was such a thing. I daresay you could teach me a thing or two about them.

As to your question, I've not much luck with it myself. So many of our rescued dragons were either hatched in the city or taken from the swamp when they were babies. They'd be even more useless in the wild than they are already.

Luckily, you don't have to deal with rehabilitating shocked and maltreated dragons who've had their tails pulled too many times. If your dragons come from the wild and are fully healed, then I see no reason why you should not attempt to send them home. I understand why you must take them yourself - Blues are not made for flying long distances. My only caution would be to take care in transporting them, and how many you transport at once. Depending on how many you have, you might have to make several trips over the course of the summer. I wouldn't take more than three at once myself, and in fireproof containers. The biggest Blue I ever had was ten thumbs, but I'm used to ones bred in captivity - they could be even _bigger_ up there! 

How long is your hike from town to…I'm sorry, I'm not going to attempt to spell that - the volcano? That might have a bearing on how many you can take. We have an atlas and personal Disc here at home, but the section on NoThingfjord leaves much to be desired. is it true what they say about the black sand?

Do be careful, my dear, and write back to let me know how it goes. And there's no need to stand on ceremony between sanctuary owners. You must call me Sybil.

Wishing you the best,

Sybil Ramkin Vimes

Ankh-Morpork

 

 

 

Grune 1, 1993

Dear ~~Lady~~ Sybil (you do me a great honor!)

How quickly the post comes now! It always did come quickly in summer, but a letter within a month is an unexpected delight. My dwarf friend Laconic Ironicson has traveled some and tells me it’s thanks to your new postal service.

Because your letter was so prompt, I got your advice just as the travel season began. You made a good point about not taking too many dragons at once. And yes, our Blues are all a good ten to eleven thumbs. The healthy ones I'm transporting especially have lovely plumage. I took the three girls most rearing to go on a day-long cart ride to the base of Atjafjatjaskatjakutl. From there, it was a short half-day hike to the slump's home. I made a rather ingenious backpack from the same flame-proof fabric I make my clothes with and fit them each in their own compartment, two on my back and one on my front like an infant. The land here really is breathtaking in the summer. It isn't too cold, and the shepherd's path I took up the mountain was easygoing. From up there, you can see all the way out to the ocean, where the sun sparkles off the water. (The sand is, indeed, black, though you can't see it from that far away.) At a certain elevation there was snow, but with three dragons packed around me I hardly felt the drop in temperature.

I was quite winded by the time I got to the slump. Do you know, I was so caught up in getting the girls home that I neglected to contemplate the prospect of seeing a dragon slump. I smelled it before I saw it: that familiar rotten-eggs and burnt-flesh smell. Then I saw the smoke and steam rising over the hill. The land all around was fertile and green, and the air was warm. The dragons have made their home in a geothermal river!

The girls began to squirm and mewl, so I quickly let them out before they got too excited and exploded themselves. Or me. I didn't want to get much closer to the slump, so I watched from afar as my girls flapped ungainly home. Between bouts of steam, I could see dozens of dragons of all sizes playing in the warm river and building their nests. There was even a waterfall rimmed by tetradecahedranol pillars, which is how brasalt looks when it cools from lava. I have several more trips to make this summer, so maybe the slump will get comfortable with having me closer.

While I have you, how is the Sunshine Sanctuary doing? You haven't been featured in Swamp Dragons Monthly for a while, and I don't get news otherwise.

Thank you again for your advice, Sybil. (I'm still so excited by that!)

Sincerely,

Helga Larsdottir

Herrinsmelt, NoThingfjord

 

 

 

July 29, 1993

Dear Helga,

I am _beyond_ jealous! To have seen a whole colony of Blues! I did some travelling in my younger days for dragon research and never got to see anything half as magnificent. (I did get to see a live, actual, large dragon once, and that was admittedly very magnificent. She tried to eat me on several occasions, but still.) NoThingfjord sounds incredibly beautiful. Though I usually make my home in the city, I was fortunate enough to spend several summers in the country. That is about the closest I've gotten to so much nature. My husband Sam is a city man, born and bred, and is, I think, a little scared of nature. We spent a bit of time in Uberwald for our honeymoon. Come to think of it, that was about as eventful as the dragon attack. My life is mundanity interspersed by brief and intense episodes.

I also have a son named Sam, and he is very interested in the dragons and, as many young boys are, poo. He loves studying dragon poo! According to the books that I or his father must read to him night after night, you can tell a lot about an animal by its poo. I understand its importance but not my son's zeal for it. He accompanies me to the kennels in his own little fireproof suit. The Sunshine Sanctuary is doing very well, thank you for asking! The heyday of pet swamp dragons seems to have passed in Ankh-Morpork. I'm sure it'll come back again in the next decade or so. Unfortunately I'm much too far away to send a Blue to, and they wouldn't like it much here anyway.

I've written a few books about cures for all swamp dragon ailments. Between raising a toddler and sitting on the boards of several charities, I'm also attempting to update _Diseases of the Dragon_. Do you know of any cures for scalies or nose grout? The Blues _always_ seem to have back problems as well, probably because of their size. I'd be grateful for any information you have on the subject.

Safe journeys!

Sybil Ramkin Vimes

Ankh-Morpork

 

 

 

Spune 14, 1993

Dear Sybil,

I have been a fool, and it has cost me dearly.

I apologize for not having written to you sooner, but I've been so busy with all my trips up to the mountain. Then a great terrible thing happened, and I have been trying to deal with it for the past few days.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Once every few weeks I have been making the journey up to Atjafjatjaskatjakutl. I have had much success, at least until this last time. The slump has gotten quite used to me, and on my last journey I was able to get right in the midst of them to return two of their sons. This was just a few days ago, and as you can see by the date, it was a bit risky to go this late in the season. The weather changes fast on the mountain. I was on my way down the mountain, a half-mile out from the slump, when a snowstorm blew in. Though I was well-prepared and dressed, I quickly became trapped. We NoThings are no strangers to snow, and I had the notion to hunker down underneath a tree and wait out the blizzard. It grew darker and darker and the snow showed no sign of abating. I was so cold and tired that I couldn't think straight. I thought I could make my way back to the slump, where it was warmer. 

After I had been walking for a long time, it was clear that I was hopelessly lost and growing colder by the minute. The thought that I would freeze to death if I sat down was the only thing that kept me stumbling along. After several hours, I found myself in hot water. Literally – I reached the geothermal river. I wanted to sink down into it, but realized that being wet wouldn’t help me much. That was about the last thought I had. I fell onto the bank and into sleep, or unconsciousness.

I awoke surrounded by warmth. I thought I was dead, or that enough snow had fallen to insulate me. Once I realized where I was, I couldn’t move. The Blues – all the ones I’d spent the summer returning home – were packed around me, keeping me warm. I was afraid that if I startled them, I’d set off a chain reaction. I was comfortable aside from that unhappy thought, so I lay there and looked around. The hills surrounding the river was covered in the first snow of the season. The snow stopped within a few feet of the warm air by the river.

Soon enough, my little slump saw that I was awake and flew all around me excitedly. It was like standing in a cloud of dragons, but a knife’s edge from combustion at any moment. And yet it was beautiful. If I hadn’t been bringing the dragons back to the mountain, I would never have been lost. And yet if I hadn’t been bringing them home, they wouldn’t have rescued me. We saved each other.

Several of my former strays tried to bring me dead rodents, which I briefly considered boiling in the thermal water, before remembering I still had some provisions in my pack. After a breakfast and gingerly patting my dragons good-bye, I started back home. It was slow going, since I hadn’t brought snow shoes, but I was warm enough. From there it was a long and frequently annoying journey back into town. When I returned home, I saw that I had not yet endured the worst of it.

While I was gone on my ill-fated trek, some angry townsperson or other broke into my sanctuary and tore apart every one of my kennels. Most of the dragons came back to roost, having nowhere else safe to go, but I have lost a not-insignificant amount of Blues. It will take me until next summer to track them all down, and even then, it would take all my days and leave no time for caring for my other dragons. I fear I may have to close up shop. I can find homes for one or two of my less volatile darlings. The rest of them will have to fend for themselves. It’s too much for me to think about right now.

What keeps turning over in my mind, as I write here in my fish- and smoke-smelling home, is why this was done to me. There are enough people who think the Blues a nuisance. Perhaps it was just some bored kids. Maybe somebody wanted a dragon to start up their hearth during the cold snap. Who knows?

It's coming up on the Hrugka time of year, when we're stuck inside and the only thing keeping us from strangling each other is nice candles. That, and books. Everyone works out their frustrations by reading crime novels filled with simply buckets of blood. It's all anyone ever writes about. Just once, it'd be nice to read a story about fluffy bunnies or something. It's not as if a lot of crime happens here anyway. Besides the odd family dispute, I do believe what happened to my little sanctuary was the first real crime I've seen. And it had to happen to me.

If I write any more, I’m afraid I’ll have to pay for extra postage, and I can ill-afford that now. I’m sorry to dump this all on you. Please let me know that all is well with you, so I have at least some good news.

Sincerely,

Helga Larsdottir

Herrinsmelt, NoThingfjord

 

 

 

Sektober 1, 1993

Dear Helga,

I can scarcely think of a greater loss to the body of swamp dragon knowledge than the loss of your sanctuary. Which is why I have enclosed the sum of money that I have. It required a rather lot of postage, I’m afraid, and I hope Ankh-Morpork Dollars are all right. One result of our former empirical leanings is that AM$ are accepted in all corners of the Disc.

Don’t even think about refusing it or, gods forbid, sending it back. Think of it as a grant, because the Sunshine Sanctuary Board of Directors _did_ vote on it. Brenda even wanted to send some workmen to help with repairs, but I turned her down with the justification that winter is coming on. Logistics are things that happen to other people for dear Brenda. (And sometimes, _Brenda_ is a thing that happens to other people, for good or for ill.) Hopefully you can contract some local workers.

When my sanctuary was threatened, oh, several years ago, my husband Sam used threats of dragon fire against the would-be attackers. I’m not sure the tactic would work the same way twice, and anyway, you want to build good dragon-human relations. Show people that your dragons are _noThing_ to be afraid of. If you do use the money to hire local workers, they will see that dragons are just big softies, really. And they’ll go home and tell _their_ families, and so on. Some people, however, do not deserve your forgiveness. (That people would have the _gall_ , the _audacity_ , to kidnap your Blues! It still makes me shake to think of.) A little guilting from the poor, helpless young lady might do the trick.

What good news of myself can I give you? Young Sam is already learning to read at the tender age of three! His tutors say he’s going to be a prodigy. His father and I are quite grateful. Sam has said time and again that he wants him to have a safe, indoor job. I’m sure Sam would prefer our son to be doing an indoor job in a locked room with padded clothing and armor on. Right now Young Sam’s greatest ambition is to _be_ a swamp dragon, so we’ll have to see.

Sam has been hard at work facilitating the Koom Valley Accords between the dwarfs and the trolls. At first he was there to keep them from hurting each other. Now he mainly sits in the corner and smiles menacingly. As he’s told me several times, he “is no good at politics”, and despite this, everyone wants him as a diplomat. With the trolls and dwarfs, he feels it’s more his place to mediate rather than tell them what to do. And a jolly good thing, too. We humans have done quite enough damage already.

And that brings me back to thinking about your poor Blues. Good luck, Helga my dear, and do stay safe in the coming winter.

All my love,

Sybil Ramkin Vimes

Ankh-Morpork

 

 

 

Offle 2, 1994

Dear Sybil,

The snows were particularly bad this winter, and I knew there was no point in writing to you until the mail coaches could get through the pass. So much has happened in the past few months that I’ve been dying to update you on!

Thanks to your generous grant from the Sunshine Sanctuary, I was able to contract a few local men and dwarves that I trust to help rebuild my sanctuary. Most of the outdoor work was done before the snows started, so we had all winter to beauty up the interior. My friend Laconic, whom I believe I mentioned before, helped me with the fiddly work on the kennels. Laconic was wary of the Blues at first, as were all the workers, but staying warm inside the sanctuary while working endeared him to the dragons. He asked one day if he could borrow one to keep his parents warm, so I gave him my very best-behaved Blue, Trym. Soon all the workers asked for pet Blues to borrow. I went around their houses every few days to see that they were being treated fairly. Sure enough, they were honored guests! It’s amazing how much people respect you once you have money to throw around.

Once Laconic got to know the Blues better, he fell in love with them, as everyone eventually does. He began to feel just as angry as I do about them being kidnapped. When the snow melted somewhat, he gathered up several of his friends who also did work on the sanctuary and was gone all night. The next morning, my kidnapped Blues had been returned safely to their new kennels! I was so happy I kissed Laconic on the cheeks, and what little of his skin I could see went very pink. Some of the Blues are shell shocked, so it’s taking most of my time to rehabilitate them. I think I’m going to hire Laconic to help me when the construction is done. It’s high time that this sanctuary has more than one employee. This summer I should have time to write up my homemade cures for scalies that you asked for so long ago.

Since I can’t keep calling it “my sanctuary”, I’m going to have a re-opening ceremony and name it the Sybil Sanctuary for NoThingfjord Blues. You don’t have any other buildings named after you, do you?

I do hope we continue to correspond. You’ve made a friend of me for life, Sybil.

 From the bottom of my heart,

Helga Larsdottir

Herrinsmelt, NoThingfjord

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is inspired by my trip to Iceland earlier this year, and a hike I did to Reykjadalur Valley. You really can hike to a thermal river, and swim in it! I didn't have to worry about snow like Helga does, thankfully.  
> The "hrugka" that Helga mentions is of course based on hygge, the Scandinavian philosophy of coziness during the winter months.  
> Lava cools into hexagonal columns of basalt, especially around water sources in Iceland and other Scandinavian countries. (As seen in How to Train Your Dragon.) A great place to see both columnar basalt and black sand is at Reynisfjara Beach in Vik, Iceland. I believe an episode of Game of Thrones was filmed there.


	4. The Rug Road, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit to Syrrit kicks off the first chapter in a multi-part story.

_“Merchants on the Rug Road…invariably hire the services of a carpet herdsman who, with his brace of Kh’olli dogs and using whistles and hand signals, herds the carpets across mountain and desert and at night brings them into a gently floating circle”. – The Compleat Discworld Atlas_

Maya regarded her flock with a mixture of pride and worry. There was nothing to be seen for miles except for rolling hills* and a clear blue sky. She hadn’t lost any of her charges so far, though she did have to double back to round up a few strays at one point.

* Not quite picturesque because the grass was browning.

Besides a few farm houses, they hadn’t seen any other humans for two days. That was worrying. There should be _streams_ of other people leading their flocks this time of year. Normally you couldn’t move for other shepherds. Sometimes they even blocked out the sun.

Maya turned and looked back at her cousin Dasha, who noticed her and smiled happily. It wasn’t that Dasha was simple, she just saw the good in things that Maya normally wouldn’t. Like flying a flock of carpets across four countries when there was a war brewing between all of them.

Uncle Sneezy flew the highest, keeping an eye on them from above. His broom got more air than the carpets did, and he didn’t like carpets much anyway. Maya protested having the chronically runny-nosed dwarf as a chaperone, especially on what was supposed to be her first solo flight to the great carpet warehouse in Ushistan.

“I’m not sending you two ladies all the way to Rugs R Us without an armed escort,” her father said, and that was that. By “armed” he meant the occasional fireball Sneezy threw to keep corvids away from the rugs back home. Legend held that a crow could unravel a rug in a matter of minutes. They liked the thread for their nests. Maya had once flown past a tree with a nest that had what she swore was a diamond weave.

It wasn’t crows they were worried about on this flight, nor other shepherds crowding them out of the sky. There had been border disputes between Syrrit and Elharib, or Smale and Ushistan, or Smale and Elharib, for years, and now it looked like the four-way twenty-year treaty was going to dissolve as fast as an unraveling rug. Maya was too young to remember what the wars were like. She and Dasha had only ever known peace.

“We’re coming up for the last waystation for thirty miles, Maya!” Dasha called from her own carpet. Neither of them had any need for maps; they’d been doing this run twice a year since they were children.

The sun hadn’t set yet, but they wouldn’t get to the next shelter before night fell. Maya could only fly at night if she held a lantern, which she didn’t really want to do on a flammable object in mid-air. She held up a hand to signal to the other two and banked towards the ground.

The waystation didn’t have many amenities to speak of. It was by a watering hole – most shelters on the route were near a water source – and had a few posts to hitch the carpets to. Dasha looped the leading lines around their flock and tethered them up for the night. They played out to the end of their ropes and bumped against each other in mid-air.

Maya got out the food while Uncle Sneezy started the fire. Although the shelter was covered in a thick layer of dust, the wood box was full. No one had stayed here since it was re-stocked at the beginning of the season. Maya tried to think what this meant while she made tea and heated up flatbread. Was this a particularly dangerous stretch of sky? Was no one making the Syrrit to Ushistan run at all this year? That was what she and her baba had been counting on when they planned this trip. It had a lot of risks, with big pay-offs. Baba trusted her enough to let her go, at least.

“The carpets are restless,” said Uncle Sneezy, glancing at the rugs straining as high as they could. They looked like a group of particularly enthusiastic balloons outside a car dealership.

“They’re nervous because we are,” Maya signed in the hand signal language she’d invented and perfected as a child. “There’s nothing out here.”

“Wishful thinking, or the truth?” Dasha asked, catching Maya’s signs as she came to join them. She sat and accepted a clay cup of tea. The three of them stared into the sky, which was just beginning to darken into complex oranges and purples.

“That’s why we brought him along,” signed Maya, indicating Sneezy. He leaned back in the grass and regarded her.

“I won’t be awake the entire time.”

They had set watches the previous two nights. Now they were really in desolate country. The only help they could expect would be from each other. Ordinary Syrriti carpet rustlers were behind them. This close to the border, the real danger was from Elharibian aerial patrols.

They weren’t that close to the border anyway. An entire day’s flight. Maya had to tell herself that or she’d keep worrying and not be able to concentrate on anything else.

“We’ll trade off watches like usual,” she signed. “And I’ll let Jiru out to fly around. It’ll let us know if anyone flies by.”

Jiru, Maya’s loyal carpet, was exceptional at keeping the other carpets in line. Its only flaw was that it would follow Maya around if she let it, and bump into the back of her head. For that reason she usually kept it tied up when they were stopped for the night. Tonight, she walked over and untied it. It nuzzled her with its tassels and did a few fly-overs of the area. It was an oddly picturesque scene: the carpet drifting over the watering hole, and the reflection of the sunset shimmering in the water. Back at the fire, Sneezy smoked and set up dominoes. Dasha had her glasses on and was reading her well-thumbed book of romance poetry.

Maya joined Sneezy for a game. She kept one ear, and one eye, turned towards the sky.

They turned in as soon as it got too dark to see. No one could see what Maya was signing unless she sat close to the fire, and they had an early start the next day anyway. The waystation offered little in the way of beds; just shallow shelves lined with straw. Since the straw hadn’t been changed since early summer, they ended up piling it all in the corner and using their own blankets.

Seeing that Uncle Sneezy was nodding off and that Dasha was asleep on her feet, Maya offered to take the first watch. She got a mumbled thanks in response, and a loud snore from Uncle Sneezy. Maya had done everything she could so far on this trip to not sleep at the same time as the dwarf with sinus problems, whose snores sounded less like sawing logs and more like an entire lumber yard.

Maya let the fire burn out. It would be seen for miles in the dark, and besides, she needed her night vision if she was going to useful at all on this watch.

With the stars spread out above her like a sparkling thrown blanket, and snuggled warmly in her bed roll, Maya tried to enjoy the watch and do some stargazing. Her ummi loved to tell her the stories of the stars. Since the Disc was always on the move, the stars were like an unfurling tapestry of tales. Ummi had a poem to go with every one. Maya tried to find her favorite star system of this summer; the one they were calling “the Spring Maiden”. The accompanying story told of how she flew into a volcano and accidentally made it erupt. Then, after the lava flooded the land, she came and made the trees grow again.

Maya sat up abruptly, her bed roll slipping down to her waist. She couldn’t find the Spring Maiden. Nor could she find the stars that surrounded it. That part of the sky was a patch of darkness.

Jiru! Where was that blasted carpet? She counted the carpets hovering motionlessly over the hitching posts. Twenty-five. All there. That other shape was an unknown carpet. Elharibians.

Maya looked frantically around, making sure the fire was out and there was no other light source. When she looked back up, the dark patch had moved. Did they know the shelter was here? Were they lost, or just on patrol?

She sat staring upwards for so long her neck started to hurt. Then she lay down again, too tense to really relax, and watched the patch wheel across the sky.

“Lone flier overhead,” Maya told Uncle Sneezy when she woke him (with some difficulty) after three hours. “I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.”

“How do you know they’re alone?” the dwarf asked. He squinted at Maya through the dim light shed by a hooded lantern. Though she was technically in charge on this trip, Maya trusted his intuition. She shrugged.

“I don’t. Do we stay?”

A few hours ago, she’d been so sure that staying put was the best thing to do. Now she questioned her own judgment. They couldn’t hide here forever. In the morning, if the flier was still there, they’d be seen. Was it best to sneak away in the cover of night?

Uncle Sneezy gave her question considerable thought. “One scout isn’t necessarily a danger. They must know people will be on this road, and this deep into Syrrit they probably won’t give themselves away.”

Necessarily? Probably? Maya reminded herself that Uncle Sneezy couldn’t see into the future any more than she could. They outnumbered the flier anyway. As long as there was only one.

Those had been mighty fine hopes, Maya thought the next morning. They worked quickly to eat and get in the air. They hadn’t flown more than four miles – now thirty-six miles from Elharib – when they were approached from the opposite direction by an alarming number of flying objects. The direction they came from, and the way they flew, made them easily identifiable.

“What the hells are they doing this far across the border?” Uncle Sneezy growled.

“Who cares why; they’re coming straight for us!” Maya signed frantically. She whistled sharply, about the only sound she could make, and the rugs huddled around them. Uncle Sneezy went high and out of Maya’s sight.

The Elharibians were close enough to see clearly now. About twelve fliers on six carpets, half of them armed with long bows. Maya didn’t see the bows until they were already being fired. The sound of them hitting the carpets was terrible. Not as bad as arrows hitting flesh, Maya had to remind herself.

Maya pressed herself flat on Jiru and took it into a dive, tugging on the corners to turn. She looked over at Dasha and saw her cousin sitting up on her carpet, watching the approaching Elharibians. She waved frantically to her and then signaled with her whole body,

“DASHA, YOU’RE A TARGET! GET DOWN!”

Dasha ducked just as arrows flew overhead and stuck in the carpet below her. Maya steered Jiru closer so Dasha could see what she was signing.

“We’re going to lose the whole flock!” Dasha wailed. Carpets plummeted to the ground all around them, too holey to stay up. The rest clustered above the cousins, giving them cover.

“We won’t lose them if we keep together,” signed Maya, now in the position of having to be the positive one. “Where’s Uncle Sneezy?”

The dwarf whizzed by overhead with a whoop. Maya glanced up through their carpet cover to see him letting off fireballs with the air of one who has the repressed desire for aerial combat. He zigged and zagged through the air, lighting the Elharibian rugs on fire with every whoop. No arrows could touch him. He didn’t present enough surface area.

“We can’t go any higher, so let’s take the flock low,” Maya signed with a grim look on her face. “Uncle Sneezy can hold them off.”

They both leaned forward, pressing the edges of their carpet down. The carpets immediately dropped. The rug vanguard above dove one after another in sequence. Wind whipped Maya’s robe and loose strands of hair. She chanced a glance up as they plummeted to see if Uncle Sneezy was occupying everyone. A few carpets peeled away from the fray to follow her and Dasha. So they were after the flock, eh?

She leveled Jiru out and whistled again. The flock hesitated, then scattered. Within seconds they were off in every direction. Rugs were never more than a few minutes away from doing this anyway. Maya knew from experience that a flock of flying carpets took days to round up, and that was if they _liked_ you.

“We’re not making it to Ushistan, are we?” said Dasha mournfully.

“We have to get to Kh’olli and raise the alarm,” was Maya’s reply. Syrrit’s capitol, its only real city, housed the military reserves and their government (such as it was). “I think the war’s just started.”

The hills that had gone from “gentle” to “rolling” over the past few days and promised to get peakish a few miles down the line were now the cousins’ greatest asset as they led their pursuers on a dizzying chase. They wove through the lowland land masses that jutted up without pattern or reason. Maya and Dasha agreed, without saying, to separate several times, only to meet up later in a valley. By this time Maya was flagging and Jiru barely skimmed thirty feet off the ground. Only one Elharibian still followed them doggedly. He’d lost his bowwoman some time back and, by the looks of it, was just as tired as Maya.

She pulled up next to Dasha and signed,

“We’re almost out of the foothills. You know what to do from here.”

Dasha stared at her, stupid with fatigue.

“You – you’re not – “

“You’re faster than me, but I’m more maneuverable.” They parted around a scrubby tree and met back up a few seconds later. “I’ll find Uncle Sneezy and see you at home in the next few days.”

The Elharibian put on a burst of speed behind them and it was no longer a decision either cousin had to make. Dasha whistled and shot high, while Maya flew backwards – a trick she’d spent weeks teaching Jiru – and collided with the soldier. He swore and dropped, barely maintaining his balance. Maya floated just above him and cautiously stood on Jiru in a crouch. The fabric dimpled dangerously beneath the balls of her feet. Then she stepped over the side and jumped on the Elharibian carpet.

There was a confusing scuffle, a tangle of limbs, a blow to Maya’s face –

Both of them toppled off the carpet. Maya tried to whistle, frantically, the wind tearing sound out of her lips. At last she let out a terrified high-pitched squeak and there was Jiru, buoying her up a mere five feet off the ground. In all the excitement, it gained a second wind. Maya lay sprawled on the rug, quite out of breath, while it carried her high in the air away from the hills and towards home. It seemed to need no instruction.

Maya realized her hands were dug into the thick fibers with a death grip. She smoothed out her fingerprints and traced into the fabric,

_Good rug._

It apparently knew what she meant, for it gave a happy wiggle.

***

She met up with Uncle Sneezy that afternoon. He led half the flock, with no small amount of bemusement, clustered around him like chicks burrowing a tiny mother hen.

“Maya!” he cried with delight. His beard was nearly burned away, probably the result of one too many spells backfiring. He batted away a rug that tried to nuzzle his face. “Can you get these things off me?”

“They’re traumatized,” Maya signed, and whistled. The rugs all came over to nudge her instead, which was the opposite of the orderly line they were supposed to form at that whistle. Maya threw her hands in the air.

“Scatter!” she whistled. “Form a line!”

“Isn’t Dasha with you?” Uncle Sneezy asked when she got the carpets to at least stop swarming her and circle up.

“I sent her ahead,” Maya explained. “I wanted her to get word to Kh’olli in case…” Her hands drifted to her lap. Then she finished, “In case we didn’t make it.”

“You did well,” the dwarf said, and steered his broomstick close enough to pat her on the back.

It took them another week to make it home. Some of the flock straggled back to them. Some were probably still out there and would happily float until they unraveled. Maya didn’t much care. She wanted her bed and she wanted to see Dasha. They flew by several burned-out villages on their way home, and stopped to give survivors a lift. The treaty was broken, and war loomed on the horizon like an oncoming carpet fleet.

When they finally saw the rooftop profile of the family farm in the distance, Uncle Sneezy whooped and Maya gasped with relief. She foisted the chicken off her lap that had been pressed on them in exchange for a ride to safety. Right between “seeing Dasha” and “bed”, Maya added “take a bath” to her list of things to do. It would take her a few washes to get all the bugs and feathers out of her hair.  
The miasma of unravelling, defective, and half-finished carpets that usually surrounded the farm extended like an arm to greet them. Maya’s bedraggled flock joined them gratefully. Maya couldn’t describe how a carpet managed to look grateful, just that you got to be able to read them after a while.

One of the carpets held Maya’s uncle, Dasha’s father. “There you are!” he cried, flinging his arms out. “What took you so long? Dasha’s been back for _days_!”

Maya jumped off Jiru before it even came to a stop and landed in Dasha’s arms.

“You’re all right, you’re all right!” Dasha sobbed while Maya squeaked happily. Finally the two cousins pulled away to look at each other. Dasha brushed some feathers off Maya’s shoulders. Maya shrugged as if to say,

 _Never mind such trivial things_ and signed, “Did you make it to Kh’olli?”

“Oh, yes, and weren’t they glad to see me!” Dasha rolled her eyes. “You’d think I’d started the war myself, the way they took my news. At least one guy – Major Someone – was grateful and made sure I got some supplies for my way home.” Her eyes lit and she reached into her sash pocket. “Oh, and he gave me this.” She pulled out a grubby piece of paper that looked like it had been folded several times and possibly stepped on. As Maya read the short letter of recommendation, Dasha continued, “He said anyone who could fly from the border to Kh’olli in my speed deserved a place in the carpet fleet. They’ll probably take you too.”

“They’re going to need experienced fliers,” signed Maya, already thinking ahead months and miles away. “I expect we’ll all make it to Ushistan, sooner or later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been kind of obsessed with the golden age of flight lately, thanks to repeated viewings of Porco Rosso and Elizabeth Wein's entire body of work. Since I didn't want someone on the Disc to just straight-up invent the airplane, Terry Pratchett smiled upon me and gave me the gift of the Rug Road, which brings carpets from Syrrit to Ushistan. Maya will follow much the same path in her adventure, with a few twists and turns along the way.  
> Syrrit and this whole area are based on Roundworld's Middle East, which are where the characters' names come from. Except Uncle Sneezy, of course. Discworld's dwarf naming conventions are a never-ending gift.


	5. The Rug Road, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya's journey continues in our next country, Elharib.

_"The State of Elharib…is populated by nomadic tribes who until a generation ago were engaged in a prolonged war with their cousins in Smale over the disputed interpretation of a word in their shared holy book, which hinged on a single dot. … If there is a capitol it is the walled city of Harib which rises from the valley floor on a low hill which appears to be in fact the stratified remains of previous incarnations of the city.” – The Compleat Discworld Atlas_

Maya shoved her goggles up on her head and pulled her handheld clacks lantern off her back. The Elharibian patrol lay in wait above the cloud bank ahead, thinking they could ambush her squadron. She banked Jiru and brought it to hover, then squeezed the handle of the clacks to begin her message.

“ _E’s – above – cloud_ ,” she mouthed along as she signaled. “ _Go – around – mountains_.”

She rested the lamp on her crossed legs and waited for the responding signal. If it was too bright out she might not see it –

There! A winking light, too far away to make out the signaler.

 _Rec’d_ , it read. _Wait 10, then join._

Her captain wanted her to see what the Elharibian patrol was going to do. The fact that she might be in trouble if they spotted her was inconsequential. Maya was the best pilot in her squadron, and she’d gotten out of worse situations. This was almost relaxing.

She leaned back on Jiru and waited. Ten minutes was almost enough time to brew a pot of tea, if she wanted to use up one of her squadron wizard’s emergency fire charms. No, better wait until she was shot down behind enemy lines and needed to cook a squirrel or something.

It was lucky she spotted the Elharibians before she flew right below them. They’d done a good job of hiding behind the clouds, but the sun wasn’t in their favor. She’d seen the telltale glint of weapons, and what glinted 4,000 feet in the air besides soldiers? *

*Very shiny birds, perhaps.

In the four months of the war so far, Maya had been blasted in the back of the head by a firebolt, shot in the arm by an arrow, blacked out while tumbling off her rug, and had lost many friends. Poor Jiru had more patches than actual carpet, and Maya’s hair was still growing back. Where she was stationed the Elharibians and Syrritis were evenly matched in the air, which was where most of the battles were fought. The Elharib-Ushistan alliance couldn’t make rugs, but they had a warehouse full of good Syrriti-made ones. Syrrit didn’t have many disposable rugs, but they could make new ones with improvements. Poor, dumb Smale had made the decision early on to try and fight two of its neighbors and was becoming a flat plain of muck for various armies to trample over.

Maya naturally thought Syrrit had better pilots. There was a bit of pride in this, since she was considered* to be the best flier in her squadron. The squadron numbered around nine, including the captain and the wizard. None of them were much older than Maya herself. Compared to most of her squadron, in fact, Maya felt impossibly old, and gaining years by the day.

 *By Maya herself, and the captain on a good day.

When she caught up with the rest of them, Maya made her report to the captain with her clacks lamp turned on dim. It was the only way she could communicate. She was sure at least someone in the squadron could learn her signs, but so far no one bothered to try. Missing Dasha was a physical ache. Maya had to be positive all on her own, which proved to be difficult in a war.

“It’s the long way to Smale, then,” said the captain when Maya finished. They all sat there, bobbing cross-legged on their carpets. Maya stretched her legs out and rolled her cramped neck. They hadn’t landed in twenty-four hours, and from the sound of it, wouldn’t be for another eight or so.

Maya must have looked exasperated, because the wizard caught her eye and said with a smirk,

“Getting tired, Corporal Nabiyev?”

Maya considered giving him a gesture that would need no translation, and gripped her hands together. Corporals didn’t tell wizards to go screw themselves.* She was supposed to be a good example for the lower-ranking and younger members of the squadron.

 *It was not a good idea to tell any magic-user that.

 “We’re all tired, Arman,” said the captain, and nodded at Maya to acknowledge her. “Take five to get some water and food, then let’s move out.”

Maya and Jiru were sent ahead to scout, which is why they took the brunt of the ambush. Elharib was a dusty, scrubbish country, especially in the foothills of the mountains the squadron headed towards. Five carpets came flying at Maya out of the scrubland and loosed off their crossbows. Their mistake was firing from far enough away to give Maya time to dodge. It was difficult to hit the Falcon of Syrrit, as Maya’s captain called her when she flew particularly well. She flew up and out of range of the oncoming bolts. When they fired again, she swung around and pulled out her clacks lantern in one movement.

“ _Ambus_ —” was all she was able to signal before Jiru was hit out from under her by a fireball. She and the carpet were instantly separated, and she began to flip through the air. Maya grabbed for her pocket as she tumbled. It was tied to her belt, and inside was a floating charm prepared by Arman. If only she hadn’t tied her damn pocket so tight! She wasn’t going to pass out, she wasn’t going to pass out…

Finally she pulled out the protective casing, fumbled it open, and snapped the charm to activate it. Her velocity gradually decreased until she was gently floating downwards. Now she had enough time to contemplate how well and truly buggered she was. Here she was, falling behind enemy lines where her squadron couldn’t get to her, without Jiru, and without anyone who could understand her. If only she could find some nice soft rocks to land on this day wouldn’t be a total loss.

She landed gracefully in the sand on the balls of her feet and promptly fell to her knees. Her legs were a little wobbly from being in the air for so long and then falling out of it. When she stopped feeling like she was going to throw up, she took stock of her position. Somewhere in Elharib, check. Deep within enemy territory, check. She could only hope her squadron had seen her warning. It was too cloudy to see the combat happening overhead, but no one else had fallen so far, which was a good sign.

From the air she’d seen a small village and something reflective that looked like a body of water. She began to walk.

Both the path to Smale, an ally, and the path back home to Syrrit were insurmountable without a carpet. Smale was over the mountains, which rose covered in snow above the desert, and Syrrit was hundreds of miles to the west. As she walked, Maya decided that going over the pass would be easier than walking home across enemy territory. Walking was so _slow_. Maya had never walked so far in her life; she was certain. At home, if she wanted to go anywhere past the farm, she took Jiru.

And poor Jiru. Most Syrrit fliers weren’t so attached to their carpets. They would go through a new one every few months. Not Maya. She and her ummi wove Jiru themselves. It was trained better than any other rug, in any squadron. They made a great team. Or had done.

The town she’d seen from the air was a few hours’ walk from her crash site. It was less a town and more a semi-permanent summer camp for one of the nomadic tribes that populated Elharib. This camp, butting up against the snowy mountains, looked to have more goats than people. Maya got along well enough with goats. They were smarter than the sheep on the farm at home. It was the people she was going to have trouble with.

One of said people came towards her now, headscarf flapping and followed by a herd of goats.

“I saw you coming down the hill,” she greeted Maya, in Elharibian, of course. Maya understood Elharibian, Smalese, and Ushistanni from years of flying over the respective countries. Dasha always complained Maya was twice as good at languages because she had to work half as hard as Dasha, who spoke the languages too. Maya countered that at least Dasha would be understood by anyone outside her own family. Maya felt so incredibly lonely sometimes. Dasha’s Elharibian was good, which was why she was somewhere in Elharib right now, doing intelligence work. Maya hadn’t heard from her since training. It would be too dangerous to send letters out, and besides, the best way of reaching Maya would be to toss a letter up in the air and hope it got blown to her carpet eventually.

Maya waved at the short shepherdess and pointed to her mouth.

“Thirsty?” the woman asked, fumbling for a waterskin. Maya shook her head and pointed to her throat again. Since she hadn’t said a word so far, the woman caught on.

 “You can hear, though?”

At Maya’s nod, the woman put a hand lightly on her shoulder and led her down the path to the village. People often made the mistake that since Maya couldn’t talk, she was simple, and therefore needed leading around.* Maya was content enough to be underestimated while stuck in enemy territory.

*She’d quickly disabused anyone in the squadron of that notion and made corporal through her flying skills alone.

“I’m Bernoush,” said the shepherdess. The goats that butted up against her now bumped Maya’s legs in a manner reminiscent of Jiru, which made Maya’s eyes burn. Bernoush pushed one’s head away. “Oh, away with you. We should figure out a story for you. With your scorched clothes, people will assume you’re from one of the burned-out camps. We have a lot of refugees here.”

At Maya’s alarmed look, Bernoush patted her shoulder and said, “You’re not the first downed Syrriti flier I’ve helped.”

Maya’s intake of breath was less of surprise, and more of an “a-ha!”

“Yes, I’m helping anyone who will take over the government we’re currently stuck with. I just sent another Syrriti up the mountain to the next camp, where they have a limited number of carpets.”

Conversation had to stop on this exciting note as they came into the camp. Maya could tell, from a little experience of military camps, that where there had once been orderly rows, there was now a free-for-all of tents set up for swelled numbers. Bernoush switched over to a running commentary about the camp.

This camp, so close to the mountains, wasn’t seeing much action from the war. The peaks were almost too tall for even carpets to fly over, which is why the Rug Road avoided them altogether. What the camp _was_ seeing was refugees. Bernoush pointed out a few of them as they went past. Dasha always told Maya she had an expressive face, which is why of the two cousins, Dasha did intelligence work and Maya did not. Every time Bernoush said something like,

“Oh, this little one is Jasmine. Lost both her parents, poor thing – “, Maya went pale and pulled her shoulders up to her ears. She’d never thrown a fireball or burning brand herself, but she’d been an advanced scout on numerous raids. She’d helped make these people refugees.

Bernoush finally reached her destination, a small red tent near the goat pens. She directed Maya inside and her animal charges into the more permanent fenced-off structures.

The tent was surprisingly well-furnished*. All the furniture** was collapsible and there was even a fire with a pot over it. Bernoush came in and they had dinner*** together, during which Maya’s host was mostly quiet as she chewed.

*If smelling of goat.  

**Covered in goat hides.

***Goat meat and squash hash.

After the unaccustomed amount of walking she’d done that day, Maya was half-asleep by the end of dinner. Bernoush still had more for her. She tossed her a headscarf and told her to cover her hair, and Maya reluctantly took the time to tear the burned sections off her clothing. To her relief, her Syrriti Air Corps-issue altitude robe was unscathed. It kept her warm thousands of feet up in the air, and would do the same as she crossed the mountains.

That thought set Maya’s brain off thinking about what she would do for supplies, and how she would know what route to take. She hardly noticed when Bernoush directed her to the tent’s only bed and tucked them both in. She dreamed of falling off Jiru, which woke her with a kick.

“Girl, what?” Bernoush asked sleepily. Somewhere in between putting Maya to bed and getting in herself, she’d taken off her headscarf and spread her long hair over the blankets. Maya had no problem sharing a bed. She always did with the other woman in her squadron, and at home – gods, when was the last time she’d been home? – she and Dasha had shared a bed all their lives.

Maya started to sign “Bad dreams” before remembering that Bernoush couldn’t understand her.

“Bad dreams?” Bernoush yawned. Startled, Maya nodded.

Bernoush snuggled deeper into the bed and half-closed her eyes. “Go back to sleep and keep up your strength. You’d better put an end to our government, understood? And get rid of the one in Ushistan while you’re at it. I don’t want to have spent four months sharing a bed with Syrriti fliers, one top of shepherding duties, for nothing.” Her voice trailed off, into sleep, Maya thought, before she clarified in a mumble, “I only shared a bed with the women. The men slept outside.”

Maya grabbed her hand under the covers and squeezed it in reassurance.

Bernoush was awake before Maya to stoke the fire. They had hash* for breakfast, and Bernoush opened a collapsible cupboard to reveal her meager food stores. Dried goat, goat’s milk, goat cheese, and some flatbread. It didn’t look like enough for a day for Bernoush, let alone Maya as well. Yet Maya was used to small meals or no meals at all after four months of war rations.

*With dried goat.

“Take it all,” Bernoush said after a moment. She started sweeping the food out of the cupboard and into a bag. As she handed the bag to Maya, the two of them stared at each other sadly. Maya took the bag and turned away.

“Let me show you where to go,” Bernoush said briskly. She led Maya outside and pointed to the mountains beyond the camp. They rose to impossible snowy heights, and it was only now, when she really looked at them, that Maya thought she’d better walk back to Syrrit instead.

Bernoush caught her intimidated expression and shook Maya’s shoulder. “You’ll be flying over the worst of it. Really! The camp is about four thousand feet up. There’s only one path, which we repair every year. If there’s enough snow to cover the path, there are cairns alongside it to show the way.”

Bernoush pulled Maya to face her and began roughly arranging her robe. Maya instinctively grabbed her wrist. She didn’t like being manhandled. Bernoush froze and coughed self-consciously.

“Sorry. Uh…Habit. I have a lot of siblings. I’ll grab you a bed roll.”

Maya adjusted the bag and bedroll on her back as comfortably as they were going to get and set her face towards the mountains. Somewhere up there was a carpet for her, and somewhere past those mountains was safety. It helped to focus on the safety she couldn’t see, as opposed to the danger looming over her.

She lifted her leg to take her first step towards the edge of the camp when Bernoush exclaimed,

“Hey! You’re leaving just like that?”

Maya turned back to Bernoush, the camp that sheltered her, and all the sooty and weary refugees of the war she fought. Bernoush looked anxious to send off another Syrriti soldier without knowing where she’d end up. Maya grasped her hand in an Elharibian handshake. Bernoush abruptly brought her headscarf up to her mouth. Maya thought she saw the other woman’s eyes glistening, but couldn’t be sure.

“All right, you can go, then.”

Maya didn’t look back.

If the walk from her crash site to the camp seemed bad, Maya couldn’t possibly have predicted what a day of walking – uphill at that – would do to her. Her sandals were disintegrating under her soles, and the spring winds whipped her borrowed headscarf. She was plenty warm, but it was still annoying.

At around the end of the first day, Maya’s well-trained inner ear told her she’d climbed to about two thousand feet. The winter snows were well melted, leaving exposed rock and not a lot of flat surfaces to sleep on. The sun soon set and she was plunged into shadow and cold.

“I should start a fire,” she signed to herself, since she hadn’t actually talked to anyone in days. “If I can find any firewood.”

Before stopping for the night, she snapped branches off scrubby trees and bushes as she climbed. She used her emergency fire charm to get the dry wood going, and soon she had a cheery little fire to warm her meager rations over. After the camp and constant motion of her squadron, it was strange to be alone. And she could not, for the life of her, recall what she’d been thinking about all day. Hiking was very much like flying in that respect. Only the simplest of thoughts filtered through the serenity. Now her thoughts caught up with her as she stared into the fire. How long would it take the letter informing her parents she was missing in action to arrive at the farm? Two weeks? Depended on how long it took her captain to land, report in, and for Central Command to dispatch the letter. It would be even longer before Maya could report to Central Command herself that she was not Missing in Action but Very Far From The Action.

Ummi wouldn’t believe Maya was dead without proof. Maya didn’t want to believe it, either. She fed more twigs to the fire and unrolled her bedroll.

The next day was much the same as the first. The experience was very humbling, Maya decided. She heard of Elharibian tribespeople going on quests like this sometimes, to find themselves. She’d been so used to being in the air, superior over all, that she’d forgotten what it was like to come down.

She only lost the path once, as she climbed over boulders the size of carriages. There wasn’t much of a path at that point, and she soon found the cairns again. She was so determined not to lose them that she didn’t notice when she was standing in the middle of the camp. There was hardly anyone about. It was mid-day, and most of the residents were probably out hunting or gathering. Her captain would have upbraided her for missing it. The tents were about the same size and color as the rocks that surrounded them, and she was tired.

She only had a few seconds to take this all in before she was hit in the face by a heavy piece of cloth.

Tassels tickled her face excitedly, and she grasped the familiar rug in a relieved embrace.

“Jiru!” called a peeved voice. “Jiru, leave them alone and get over here.”

Maya slowly pushed Jiru aside, not even daring to hope…Dasha emerged from inside a tent, looking annoyed until she saw Maya. Then they were sprinting at each other and laughing, falling, rolling on the ground. Jiru hovered above them, unsure of who to land on first.

Maya pushed Dasha off and sat up. “Finally, someone to talk to!” she signed. Her fingers felt heavy and clumsy. “My gods – Dasha – are you the one Bernoush sent up here three days ago?”

“Yes!” Dasha cried. “You met her too?” She stopped and looked around at the Elharibians who had emerged from their tents to watch their reunion. “Come on, let’s go inside to talk.

“Deal.” Maya let herself be tugged along more willingly by Dasha than by anyone else. Her cousin led her to the narrow opening of a tent, which she had to crawl through to get to the wider space, lined with hides* and warmed by a brazier. These tents were more heavy-duty than Bernoush’s, built to withstand the snow.

 *Goats’.

Dasha brought Jiru with her, rolled up and tugged alongside. She unrolled it and picked up a heavy-duty sewing kit that she’d obviously left in there before she was interrupted. Jiru had a large hole in his middle surrounded by scorch marks, which Dasha was attempting to patch.

“The poor thing found me on the way here. It’s a wonder it can fly at all.” Jiru lay obediently while Dasha resumed sewing it.

“I hope Bernoush prepared you better for mountain climbing than she did for me,” Maya signed with a roll of her eyes. Dasha grimaced.

“No, but I can’t blame her. It hasn’t been the best week for me. Never mind that, how did you get _here_? On the _ground_?”

“I refuse to sign until you tell me what _you’re_ doing here. Deal?”

Dasha sighed dramatically at her cousin’s stubbornness and began. It transpired that Dasha’s cover in Harib, the capitol city, had been threatened by a former ally. Rather than make a quick escape Syrrit-wise and reveal that there’d been spies in Harib at all, she leisurely made her way to the Elharib-Smale border. The nature of what she’d been doing in Harib had to remain a secret even to Maya. Dasha took her oath very seriously.

“Bernoush did what she could, and the man who owns this tent is helping me. Now, you’ve got to tell me about you or I’ll positively explode.”

Maya related her own story, from the aerial ambush to the last two days’ hike. She showed Dasha her sandals, which were worn down to straps and some pieces of leather, as evidence. When she was finished, her shoulders hurt from signing and Dasha was staring at her with wide eyes.

“Bernoush was more prepared to outfit me, she had advanced warning. But my gods, sending you up here with sandals and a bedroll? What if a storm had blown in? The next message I send to Bernoush through the network will be a strongly-worded one.”

“She did what she could,” Maya signed, recalling the weary look in Bernoush’s eyes. “She gave me clothes off her back and her last food. I can’t complain.”

Truth be told, she’d rather liked the forthright shepherdess. Maya often wondered what her own voice would sound like, and knew that from here on, she’d imagine herself sounding like Bernoush.

Dasha gave her a skeptical look and simply said, “Hmm!” because she had a needle in her mouth. She held up Jiru, regarded it, and said “Hmm!” again. The rug was doing an admirable job of keeping still while getting patched up, and Maya gave it an affectionate pat.

“’s it air-wurfy, d’you fink?” Dasha asked around the needle. Maya interpreted this as “Is it air-worthy, do you think?”

She felt the patch with expert fingers. “For one of us, yes,” she concluded. “We can’t both take it. I thought Bernoush said they had some carpets here.”

“Oh, yeah, they’re all old and wind-worn,” Dasha said dismissively. “I thought if we could fix Jiru up, then maybe…Oh, well. I’ll just have to borrow one and release it when we get to Smale.”

The two cousins slept curled up together under goat hides that night, as they had when they were girls. The man whose tent they slept in woke them up with goat stew the next morning. Both Dasha and Maya woke and were ready to go within two minutes. War trains you not to expect lie-ins.

“You’d better go within the hour,” the tent owner said anxiously. “The tribe chieftains are getting suspicious.”

“What are wind conditions like?” Dasha asked between guzzling bites of stew. Maya was surprised by the changes the war had wrought on her cousin. Her relentless cheeriness had blossomed into a confidence that made Maya almost want to salute her.

“Wind speeds are nil,” said the man, taking Maya’s bowl and spoon from her as she still chewed her last bite. “My carpet’s outside. Just – please – get on it and go.”

He all but shoved them towards the entrance.

“What are you going to tell your tribe about us?” Dasha asked. She slung a bag over her shoulder on the way out. She’d slept with the same bag close by. Maya wondered just how much of her mission Dasha left out of her account. What had she been doing in Harib, if not gathering important intelligence? Did the bag carry pages of notes? A codebook?

“I’ll think of something,” said the man, not sounding at all confident or creative. “Don’t worry about me.”

Dasha held out her arms and stopped Maya and the tent owner from leaving. “Hold on,” she ordered. “I’m not flying out on a plan as flimsy as that. And we don’t want you to get into trouble. Here’s what we’ll do.”

A few moments later, Dasha and Maya emerged from the tent at a run, throwing the flaps aside and nearly knocking the whole thing over. Several concerned-looking citizens armed with bows were waiting outside in the pre-dawn light. Hot on the cousins’ heels was the tent owner, yelling,

“Thieves! They’re after my carpet!”

The carpet in question, threadbare and coming unraveled, was hovering excitedly just above the crowd. Dasha leapt up and grabbed it at about the same time the tent owner grabbed Maya’s headscarf. She whipped around, took him by the shoulders, and kneed him convincingly in the fork. Though this was improvised, he took the hint and doubled over. Dasha, who was now mounted on the old carpet, whistled and shot out of grabbing range of the agitated crowd. She was still within bow range. Maya pushed through the elders and ran for the nearby cliff, hoping she’d be enough of a distraction. The sound of bowstrings twanged behind her. Whether it was at her or Dasha she didn’t know. Either way, nothing hit her this time.

With Jiru hastily patched, she was only going to get one shot at this lift-off. She unfurled the rug as she ran, and it flapped out behind her. Then she took a flying leap off the cliff. Jiru twisted, billowed, and finally caught a thermal. Maya clung on as the wind rushed past her face. Someday, that would be the last thing she ever felt, but for now she was going to live another day.

A few hundred feet up, she met Dasha. Dasha sat hunched forward on her knees, clutching her shoulder. Maya hovered nearby and tried to reach out to her cousin. Dasha finally realized she was there and looked up at her with a wan smile.

“Could – have been worse,” she croaked. One of those arrows had found its target. Maya clicked her tongue in worry. The mountains’ heights stretched the limit of a carpet’s ability, especially that of old and damaged ones. Going around would more time than they had, and there was nowhere to land.

Dasha groaned. Maya made the decision. Mid-air surgery it would be. She tapped Dasha on the head to get her attention.

“Don’t pull the arrow out,” she instructed, having some experience with arrow wounds herself. “Wrap it VERY TIGHTLY with these.”

She pulled strips off her bedroll and handed them to Dasha. Her cousin, wincing and sucking in air, wrapped the arrow and tied it off with her teeth. Then she laughed, very carefully.

“What?” asked Maya.

“This is my first war wound.”

“Seriously?” Maya signed. Her hands involuntarily went to the sites of her own wounds, some still healing.

“I know. The stuff I’ve been doing was relatively safe…” Dasha trailed off.

“Until it wasn’t,” Maya finished.

There were a few moments of silence, with Dasha hunched over herself. Then she sat up and stilled her face, like she’d tucked away the pain to deal with later.

“Where to now, Corporal Nabiyev?”

“We go around,” Maya signed with confident hand motions. She could not fall apart, not now. She had to keep it together for Dasha, even though she wanted to hold her cousin to her chest and cry. “Less risk that way, and I’m counting on your wound to stay stable.”

“I’ll update you on how that’s going,” Dasha groaned. “Around it is.”

Smale, though Syrrit’s ally, wasn’t going to be much safer than Elharib. The upshot was that you didn’t have to be undercover around everyone you met, and the downshot was that at any time, you could be attacked from above by a crossbow bolt, arrow, or fireball. From Maya’s limited knowledge of the Smale front, carpets were few, air raids were common, and food was scarce.

“We volunteered to do this, didn’t we?” she asked Dasha as they skirted around the peaks. This really was a beautiful country, with the unbelievably tall mountains and morning light glinting off the snow.

“Despite your best efforts to convince me otherwise, yes.” Dasha had some of her color back, and the bandage on her shoulder looked, if not _clean_ , then not bloody. She gave Maya a sad smile. “I’m starting to think that maybe you had something there.”

“You didn’t get hurt until I came along,” Maya reminded her. “As long as we’re together, I’ll catch you when you fall, like I always do. Deal?”

For a moment they were fourteen and ten again, back home and playing around on their carpets. Dasha reached out a hand and took Maya’s.

“Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of this on vacation, and the length kind of got away from me.  
> Maya's hike is similar to the climb up the legendary Asgard Pass in Washington State. There really isn't a path, just a series of cairns. Gosh, I base a lot of these stories on my hiking experiences, don't I?  
> Maya and Dasha's relationship is, if you couldn't already tell, central to this story. I'm very close to my sister, and female relationships are very important to me. They're also important to Elizabeth Wein's books, which I've already mentioned are a big inspiration.


	6. The Rug Road, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maya and a wounded Dasha enter the borders of Smale, an allied country, but how safe is it?

 

_“Smale is a small inland kingdom comprising a central plateau bounded by the Herelaya mountain range widdershins and to rimward. … There appear to be no natural resources, though prospecting has been limited because of the belligerent nature of the nomadic population who are continually skirmishing with the tribesmen of Elharib.” – The Compleat Discworld Atlas._

 

The Smale Army camp looked from above like a gigantic mud pie with a few hundred tents sprinkled on top like garnishes. Maya could only imagine how much worse it was on the ground. Still, she was glad to see a safe haven after flying all day. She twisted around to check on Dasha. Her cousin’s face was pale beneath its layer of travel dust, and she swayed slightly on her borrowed carpet.

“Good to land?” Maya signed, not even sure Dasha would see with her eyes half-closed.

“I’ll at least make it down before I faint,” Dasha said weakly. Maya slowed to catch up with her and matched pace, ready to catch if Dasha started to fall.

"The bag,” Dasha said, and gingerly pulled it off her shoulder. “Give it to someone as high up in command as you can.”

“I understand,” signed Maya. They touched down outside a large medical tent and, true to her word, Dasha went from cross legged to sprawled out across her carpet the instant they hit ground.

"Wounded flier!” Maya started to sign, then mouthed a curse. The only person who could understand her was unconscious. She tossed the bag across her body and checked on Dasha. She’d fallen onto her bad shoulder and driven the arrow in deeper. Fresh blood oozed into the dirty bandages.

Tears of frustration pricked Maya’s eyes. All around her, nurses and doctors helped wounded soldiers in on carts and stretchers. The soldiers were horribly burned, missing limbs, bleeding out. A fainting flier with an arrow wounded must rate low on their list of priorities, even when she landed in the middle of a main thoroughfare.

Finally Maya realized she was in the way and dragged Dasha onto Jiru. The carpet laboriously rose and followed Maya off to the side of the path. Maya whistled for the other carpet. She didn’t want to have to keep it from its poor Elharibian owner any longer. They had caused him enough trouble. She gave it the “go home” whistle and it flew off with a goodbye dip of its fringe.

That taken care of, she followed the other injured inside the big infirmary tent where a harassed-looking male nurse directed the invalids. When it was her turn, Maya mimed firing a bow and then indicated Dasha’s shoulder.

“Projectile surgery, tent 2C, right over there,” he directed her, not seeming to care she wasn’t a medic. Maya left the big tent, entered a smaller tent with a large “2C” painted in red, and at long last, a nurse rushed to Dasha’s side.

“This wound looks old,” the woman said. She couldn’t have been more than a year out of medical school. “When did she get it?”

Maya held up eight fingers.

“Eight days!” the nurse exclaimed, not filling Maya with much confidence in her medical abilities. “Oh, eight hours, I see. Can’t speak Smalese?”

Maya shrugged and nodded. That was true enough.

“You wait in that chair over there, and we’ll have this stitched up in a jiff. I’ve gotten quite good at quick surgery. Nurse Toma, arrow wound in the pectoralis. Get me forceps and a suture kit.”

The nurses surrounded Jiru and pulled it towards an operating table. Maya, glad to be free of responsibility, hobbled to the proffered canvas chair. Now that her worry about Dasha was somewhat lifted, exhaustion crashed down around her ears. She fell asleep in the chair. Dasha’s bag was clutched tightly in her lap.

She woke in a bed with a crick in her neck. For a few moments she floundered in panic, unused to the softness of even a camp cot. Her hand reached out and touched the leather of the intelligence bag. The rest of her reason came soon after. At some point during Dasha’s surgery, her nap turned into a full night’s sleep. They must have sleepwalked her into a bed that they probably couldn’t afford to spare.

At that thought, she sat up and put on her boots. The tent was full of the groaners – those who would live – and the silent – those who wouldn’t last the new day. She got up to see which category Dasha belonged to.

After a hasty meal of chickpea hash, a new doctor, older and with black bags under his eyes, led Maya to Dasha’s bed. She slept peacefully, her shoulder cleanly bandaged. Asleep, she looked like the sleeping Dasha Maya had known all her life, if a little paler.

“We’re letting her sleep, but as soon as she wakes up she’ll have to leave,” the doctor told Maya. “It’s Corporal Nabiyev, isn’t it? Sorry, we had to check your ID bracelets while you slept to make sure you weren’t Elharibians.”

 Maya nodded to indicate she didn’t mind. This triggered something in the doctor’s brain, for his face lit up and he handed Maya the slate and chalk that hung from Dasha’s bed.

 “Take this,” he said. “Nurse Isa explained to me your muteness.”

 “Thanks,” Maya wrote in Smalese, then rubbed it out and wrote “Officers – where?”

 The doctor studied her, trying to decide – Maya figured – if she were important enough to learn where the officers stayed. He’d seen her identity bracelet, he must have known she was a corporal in the Air Corps. It had to count for something.

 He nodded and said, “It’s a ways from here. Out of the medical area and in the general soldiers’ quarters. Big semi-permanent building, can’t miss it.”

 Maya didn’t worry about the distance; she had Jiru now. She cinched the bag tight across her body and wrote on the slate,

 "Where’s my carpet?”

 “Oh…” The doctor looked suddenly guilty. Cold flushed through her. A day after she’d gotten Jiru back, and they’d taken it again?

 “What?” she mouthed, hands shaking too much to write. She was alone in a new country, her cousin was unconscious, and she wanted just one familiar thing. She threw aside the headscarf Bernoush gave her and jabbed at her corporal’s stripes – _see these?_ She spread her arms and glared at the doctor. _Now where is it?_

 “Amazing, I can understand you so well,” the doctor babbled, suddenly sweating. “You’re very eloquent, miss – uh – corporal. The Smalese Carpet Force always needs new carpets, and since you weren’t using yours, it got…re-allocated.”

 Maya entertained the idea of telling the doctor he could re-allocate his words where the sun didn’t shine, and took a deep breath. What was really more important right now, her own property or getting valuable intelligence to Smalese High Command? She chose the adult option. Picking up the slate, she strode out of Tent 2C without a backwards glance.

 By the time Maya made it to the officers’ building, her robe was covered in mud up to her knees. It seemed as if the whole camp had been built on a marsh. There was no time to do laundry before presenting Dasha’s bag, but she could still look semi-decent. She made sure her headscarf was straight, as all people covered their heads in Smale, and adjusted her stripes so they were more prominent. She would need all the dignity she could muster. Not many Syrriti women flew in the Air Corps, and even fewer in the Smalese Carpet Force.

 Her first steps into the officers’ hall, a private stopped her and said, “If you’re the new girl Captain Umarov ordered, he’s in his room – 27E.”

 Maya hissed at him and pointed to her stripes. The private paled and saluted.

 “Ma’am! Sorry, ma’am.”

 Maya wrote on the slate, “Where’s Intelligence?”

 The private saluted again. “Down the hall and to your left, ma’am.” He saluted a third time, desperate to not have her report him. “I could escort you, ma’am.”

 She shook her head and followed where he’d pointed. Though the doctor had called this building “semi-permanent”, and it could only have been up for the four months of the war, it was already showing signs of wear. The floors and walls were buckled and stained with water damage. A few boarded windows showed signs of fireballs. It also smelled of burnt chickpeas, just like the Air Corps mess in Syrrit.

Maya was glad to see there were no signs and few labelled rooms, to deter spies. Unfortunately, it was also deterring her. She turned the corner and found a hallway of unmarked doors stretching before her. The hallway was filled with people going about their business, mostly exhausted-looking men with purposeful expressions. She didn’t want to stop any of them to ask directions and incur suspicion. She spied a Smalese woman in uniform and flagged her down. The middle-aged woman, clean despite the mud pit outside, spotted Maya’s rank and said,

"Yes? How can I help you, corporal?”

Maya held up her slate, which still read “where’s Intelligence?”

The woman nodded to the bag on Maya’s shoulder. “I can take that to Captain Musin for you.”

Maya wrote patiently, “I was told to deliver it to the highest-ranking officer I could find.”

The Smalese woman sighed. “That would be Major-General Kazemi, around here, but I doubt he’ll take you seriously. Offler knows he doesn’t pay attention to _me_. Tell the truth, you might be better off giving it to someone lower down the pay scale who actually knows what’s going on.”

Maya weighed this information against the request from Dasha. If Dasha thought the Major-General should get the information, then who was Maya to question that? Dasha obviously knew its importance better than she.

“The Major-General, please,” she wrote. She thought the woman might refuse, then realized she was only wearing a private’s uniform. Maya _outranked_ this woman who was her ummi’s age, and could order her around if she wanted.

Luckily, she didn’t have to, for the woman sighed, “I don’t know what good this will do,” and set off down the hallway. Maya followed her to a door instinct from the others, which the private knocked on. At an answering rap of a different beat, she opened it and stepped inside.

“Go on in, ma’am. I have to get back to my post.”

Maya stepped into a windowless smoky room dominated by a table with topographical features. Maps with pins stuck in lined the walls. Men – all men, except for a woman with a tea tray – stood at the table or talking off to the side. A few looked up as she entered, and one man said,

“Captain Umarov isn’t here anymore, he’s in his room, 27E.”

Maya stiffened and saluted the room in general, then pulled off her bag and walked towards the man with the most medals and stripes. He was rather short, with a protruding belly and sagging mustache. As she approached with the bag outstretched, he barely glanced at her and waved to the man standing next to him.

“Lieutenant, take that off the girl, would you?”

The lieutenant stowed his clipboard under his arm and reached for the bag. Maya didn’t want to pull away for fear of how that would look, so regretfully let him take it. She watched as he went over to dump it on a side table.

“That bag contains very important intelligence,” she wrote on her slate. She had to cough a few times before she got Major-General Kazemi’s attention. Then she kept coughing, from all the smoke in the room.

“Eh?” he squinted at the words, which she’d written in Syrriti. It was the only language she knew how to write in, and everyone had understood her so far. “What’s this say, lieutenant?”

The lieutenant stepped up to his superior’s elbow and read. “She says the bag she brought holds important intelligence, sir.”

The major-general went back to studying the topographical table. Maya glanced at it, and something about it bothered her. She shoved it to the back of her mind. Dasha gave her a task, and she intended to complete it. Just imagine if the Smale-Syrrit alliance lost the war because of sexism.

On her slate she wrote, “That intelligence comes from Harib via Private First Class Dasha Nabiyev. She said it could win us the war.”

When Major-General Kazemi looked up at her again, he _tch_ ed and said “She’s still here? Escort her out, please, lieutenant.”

Without touching her, the lieutenant hovered a hand near her back and led her towards the door. Furious, she put the sign in his face. He read it and stared at her.

“Are you Corporal Nabiyev? The Falcon of Syrrit?”

“How did you know that?” Unless word about her had gotten around, which she very much doubted, her captain had survived and made it to the camp.

"I remember reading someone’s report just yesterday,” he said. “Your surname sounded familiar, and he said you were mute. I don’t think Syrriti has many mute corporals.”

They paused at the door, and he glanced at his superior before asking Maya, “Will you walk with me outside, corporal?”

Just then, Maya realized what was wrong with the table. She marched over to it, ignoring a general’s protestations, and moved the carpet symbolizing Elharibian air patrols to the mountains where she’d been shot down. Then she joined the lieutenant in the hallway.

“You’ve been reported missing in action by your captain,” he said. “You should report to him when you’re done here. You’ll have to ask the Syrriti Logistics Division where your squadron is.”

“My captain called me the Falcon of Syrrit?” she asked, taking pride in the one good thing she’d heard today. Her parents were going to thinks he was dead, but hey, she had a cool nickname.

“Said you were his best flier. He’ll be happy to see you. Now tell me, what was in the bag?”

“I didn’t read it, sir,” said Maya, hoping her offended expression came across. “It was my cousin’s mission. I just met her along the way.” Here she had to rub out the slate and start over, “She was shot just on the Elharibian border and is in the medical area. She should report in to her superior, too.”

The lieutenant finished reading and met her eyes looking impressed. “That sounds like quite the story. I’d pay good money to read your report, but you should tell it to your captain first. Maybe it’ll make its way up to me and I’ll read it in a few days.”

_Offler willing, someone important enough will,_ she thought sourly. She was grateful for the lieutenant paying attention to her, but anxious that no one higher up would listen. She remembered the private’s words in the corridor. She’d tried to warn Maya that maybe the highest up weren’t actually the ones in charge

"Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, sir,” she wrote. He met her eyes and said seriously,

 "I will.”

 Maya decided that although she should probably report to her captain first, it was going to take hours of bureaucracy to find her squadron. And she still needed to find Jiru. At least she knew where Dasha was. That was about the one thing she was sure of.

 Casualties for a land-based skirmish were being brought into tent 2C just as Maya entered. She flattened herself against the canvas to let the shouting medical staff rush in. The soldier they bore on a stretcher had a sword sticking out of his stomach, and Maya turned away before she retched. The only wounds she’d had to deal with up close were her own or Dasha’s. Air combat was fought distantly enough to spare her many of the gory details.

_This is just the way it is_ , she reminded herself. _We heap atrocities on each other. The only way it will end is with more information like Dasha’s._

Dasha herself stood by her bed with her arm in a sling. One nurse was giving her a final check-over, while a second stripped her recently-vacated cot. The bed was clearly needed by the soldiers coming in. Quick turnover here in 2C. Though she was still pale, Dasha lit up when she saw Maya. “My bag? Did you deliver it?”

Maya nodded and signed, “A lieutenant said he’d pay special attention to it. They have a lot of information to go through, D.”

Dasha frowned. “Didn’t you tell them it’s important?”

Maya was starting to get the sense that besides her own commander, Dasha hadn’t had much contact with the Smale-Syrrit army since her training. If you wanted anything to get done, you had to wait a few weeks unless you knew a guy. And that was usually just to acquire cigarettes. “Of course, D. There aren’t many women officers here. We’re going to have a hard time getting anyone to listen to us.”

She’d been propositioned by no fewer than three soldiers on her way back from the officers’ building. Maybe she could make herself a bigger set of corporal’s stripes – in cardboard, that covered her entire torso, perhaps.

“Who are you supposed to report to?” Maya asked. They moved towards the entrance, trying to avoid the worst of the casualties. “My captain is apparently around here somewhere. I have to find him, and Jiru, and…” she fluttered her hands. “Get back in the air, I guess. Begin a new mission.”

Dasha clung to her arm as they walked. “I’m going to miss you, Maya. Being shot was almost worth it to spend some time together. Yes, I’ve got a faceless name – Captain Rahal – who’s technically my subordinate. I knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything, which is why I haven’t even sought him out yet. It’s going to take a while to find him in this mess.”

Outside, a crush of the wounded and their nurses trapped them at the entrance. Maya couldn’t look away from them because they were everywhere: covered in burns and blood. Dasha turned to shout in Maya’s ear, then shook her head and signed, “We need to get out of the way.” Dasha could sign, though she didn’t have the occasion to very often.

Maya took Dasha’s hand and sidled along the edge of tent 2C out of the way. They squelched through a particularly muddy section, soaking the hems of their robes, and then they were free of the crowd. Dasha turned to Maya with hollow eyes.

“It’s like that all over, isn’t it? All those poor men…”

“On both sides,” Maya agreed.

They walked without talking for a few minutes, Maya going where she thought the Syrriti section of the camp was. Dasha spoke up.

“Where did you say Jiru was?”

“It got re-appropriated while we slept. It’s needed elsewhere, by some other pilot. My captain will help get it back. I can’t be in the Air Corps without my carpet.”

She very well could, she reminded herself, just with an inferior carpet she didn’t know well. She would master it, of course; she’d been whistling to rugs since she was four. But it wouldn’t be the same.

Eventually they had to part ways: Maya to the Syrriti section of the camp, and Dasha to try her luck in Intelligence. Maya almost offered to walk her there, then remembered Dasha had survived for three months undercover in an enemy city. Her little cousin was growing up. Instead, she just crinkled her eyes as she squeezed Dasha’s hands, hoping that would be enough.

The Syrriti area was a much smaller world inside the larger camp. It was fiercely delineated and decorated in the most obvious Syrriti style. Traditional woven banners hung from every tent and sign. There were also a lot more carpets around. One of them held a flier who recognized Maya, and directed her to the tent where here squadron was staying. She waved her thanks before squelching on.

“Offler’s Teeth, Nabiyev!” her captain swore as she entered. He set down his cup so fast it almost fell over, and rushed to greet her. She saluted him, which he returned before shaking her hand.

“I thought if anyone could get out of that, it was you, Corporal.”

Her eyes scanned the squadron over his shoulder. Their ranks were thinner than when she’d left them in the air over Elharib. The captain followed her gaze and said grimly,

“Shardoul and Mazouki. We lost them in that ambush.” Shardoul was the only other woman in the squadron and a fine flier. Maya hadn’t gotten to know her that well, since they couldn’t really talk, but still felt the loss like a hot stone in her stomach. “Thought we’d lost you too. I had to write some very difficult letters to families back home. At least I’ll be able to retract one of them. Come, sit.”

She sat at the rickety folding table with the remnants of her squadron. They’d suffered casualties before which had thinned their ranks, and it always brought them a little closer. She noticed how they all leaned in together in the dim light of the tent. Maya’s captain passed her a sheaf of paper out of his satchel, and someone got her a mug of sweet tea while she scribbled her report. The captain scanned it, then read an abridged version aloud. The men whistled appreciatively, even the wizard Arman, who seemed to be a lot less petty now that they’d lost a few more people. Someone brought Maya a plate of food, and she dug in, her stomach acutely aware that the only thing she’d had to eat since two nights ago was the chickpea hash that morning. The food here wasn’t much better: flatbread stuffed with barley and a bowl of goat broth.

The rest of the squadron left her and the captain alone. He leaned in, pushing the paper towards her, and said,

“I’m glad you made it back to us, Nabiyev. Just in time to move out towards Ushistan. They’re in desperate need of fighting on the front lines.”

Maya swallowed, the goat broth sitting heavy and sloshing in her stomach. Nowhere was the fighting as bad as the front lines, the ever-shifting border between Ushistan and Smale. By all accounts, the lines usually shifted in Ushistan’s favor. They had the higher ground, the better armaments, and more carpets. All of those were Syrriti carpets, of course, but they hadn’t been trained to turn on their masters. They’d been trained – some of them by Maya – to do what they were told. And now she was going to meet them in combat.

“When are they shipping us out?” she wrote on the paper.

“They’re waiting for Al Hamman to be back in Smalese control,” said her captain. “That could be a few days, or another week or two. For now we’re staying put. It’ll be an easy few days; this camp has been safe so far. Take the rest of the day to rest and we’ll start with drills bright and early tomorrow.”

“Sir, my carpet,” she wrote before he turned away. “Jiru. It was taken after I got here. Could you get it back for me?”

She saw the captain’s jaw tighten as he read her words, and when he was done he looked up at her and shook his head. “Individual carpets aren’t marked. I’d have no way to track it down. I’m sorry, Nabiyev. I know you flew well on that thing. I’ll try and get you a good replacement. Only the best for the Falcon of Syrrit, right?”

He stood, slapping her jovially on the back. She knew he was trying to reassure her. It didn’t work. She sat at the table for a long few moments, letting the knowledge that she’d probably never see Jiru again settle within her. Only a few days ago she thought she'd lost Jiru for good. It was just a thing, she reminded herself, unsuccessfully. Then she picked up her bowl and spoon and went to find the women’s barracks.

***

Since the Syrriti women’s barracks were a tiny and mostly empty tent, Maya knew exactly when Dasha entered late that night. Even though there were a few empty cots, she crawled in next to Maya. Maya felt her cousin shaking with rage as she scooted over to make room.

“Those sexist, short-sighted _pigs_!” she hissed. “The captain I was supposed to report to died on the way over here, and I wasn’t re-assigned to anyone. They were more worried about that than what I actually had to say. None of them were Syrriti, and even though my Smalese and Elharibian are _perfect_ , they talked slowly like I didn’t understand what they were saying. There’s got to be someone else we can go to, Maya. Either that or we just fly to Ushistan ourselves.” Since it was too dark for Maya to sign, she had to wait until Dasha wrapped her arms around her and whispered in her ear, “I know how to infiltrate the Ushistan carpet warehouse.”

Ah, the Waltaw’Ali Carpet Warehouse – a place she and Dasha visited once a year, in that time before the war that seemed impossibly longer than four months ago. They hadn’t spent much time in it, and security had been ramped up to the extreme anyway. Their information on how to get inside wasn’t any good. At least, it hadn’t been, until Dasha had cozied up to an Elharibian official and stolen troop movements and security plans out of his desk. The contents of Dasha’s precious satchel would allow a small team to infiltrate the warehouse and sabotage it.

All this, Maya had to extrapolate from a few whispered words from Dasha. They didn’t want to wake their other tentmates, and besides, Dasha wasn’t supposed to say any of this out loud to anyone.

“Of course, they’ll hand this off to someone else and I’ll be re-assigned to somewhere in Ushistan or Elharib. They were surprised to see me here. I’m not really supposed to be this far across the border.”

The cot was tiny, so they had to hold tight to each other to keep from falling off. Maya clung to her cousin perhaps more tightly than necessary. Beneath the smell of mud, blood, and sweat, she smelled like home.

The first thing Maya smelled when she woke up was smoke. Then she jolted awake as the screaming began. Magic in the air tasted sharp on the back of her tongue. There were screams, both of people and horses, and waves of heat rolling across the barracks.

“Maya!” Dasha screamed as they both disentangled themselves from the cot. They were the only ones in there – the other women had either gotten up earlier, or already fled. Maya stuck her head out the tent flap. The air was dark with flying figures, the early morning lit up by the fireballs and burning brands they threw. Maya ducked back inside and pulled Dasha against a stack of crates that made one of the tent walls. Outside, they would be running targets. Most carpet attacks didn’t last longer than a few minutes.

Maya had never been on the other end of an air raid before. _Is this what it’s like?_ She wondered wildly as she and Dasha cowered behind the stack of crates. _Is this how the people below us feel?_

Dasha, for all her bravery in the air, and the way she’d dealt with the crossbow bolt, was reduced to a shaking, sobbing mess by the fireballs. Maya didn’t think she’d been in any air raid, from either side. She held her cousin as she cried.

Then a gust of wind blasted their tent apart. Maya raised her head from beneath her hands to look wildly around for escape. The tent collapsed across their only way out, and all around them were burning tents and piles of equipment. She glanced up, then threw herself across Dasha to protect her from the roaring heat of an oncoming fireball. It hit the crates next to them, engulfing Maya in sparks, burning chunks of wood, and shrapnel. Dasha screamed, and Maya choked on her fear. The heat was becoming too great. They had to get out somehow.

She hauled Dasha up by her elbow. The crates would have been climbable if they weren’t also on fire. Maya spotted an opening between two crates that hadn’t caught yet. Pulling Dasha along, she sprinted to safety.

Outside the tent wasn’t much better. They stood in an avenue of fire. Tents crackled and ash settled into the mud beneath their feet. The battle whizzed by on carpets overhead. Maya would have given anything to have Jiru in that moment, to carry herself and Dasha to safety. But there was no way it could find them in this hell. Smoke filled their lungs, and they both coughed furiously. Dasha jerked her elbow free of Maya to take her hand. They were running side by side now, zig-zagging across the mess of the camp, jumping over burning tents and tripping on the fallen bodies of men laying face-down in the mud. Maya didn't know where to go or where would be safe. She'd barely been at the camp a day, she didn't know the emergency protocols.

Neither did anyone else, it seems. Everyone, uniformed officers included, ran around like decapitated chickens. It would have been funny if the air didn't smell of burning flesh. Finally, finally, some of their fliers got into the air and fought back. Maya recognized the flying formation of her squadron. If she had Jiru, she could be up there too, doing her duty. Being airborne, too, would save her from the fire that spread across the camp. Mud did not do much to deter fire when it had so many lovely flammable tents to burn.

Even after the enemy fliers left, they had an even worse issue on their hands. There was little enough water as it was. People were better off flinging buckets of mud onto the fires, which they did. Maya and Dasha, ash covering their faces and limbs caked in mud, joined a bucket line trying to save the medical tents.

By the time they got the all-clear, the sun was high in the sky. Maya's chest burned, a fact she had neglected to notice while her body subsisted on adrenaline. Her breath, short (she thought) from hauling buckets, wouldn't catch in her lungs. She coughed, of course - everyone was coughing - and stumbled out of the line. Dasha stood a little ways away, hand on her head as she stretched her back. She only became concerned when a coughing fit doubled Maya over. Then her cousin was at her side, hand on her back.

"Hey, Maya?"

She grabbed Maya's arm as Maya pitched sideways into the mud. 

***

" - sir, I'm telling you, she can fly. She'd be perfect for this mission. As long as we can get new carpets."

"You're both fliers, PFO Nabiyev?"

"Yes, sir. Some of the best. I know my records didn't make it along with me, but you can ask the corporal's captain in the Syrriti Air Corps. I'm only in intelligence because I know the area and the languages."

Maya came to in the midst of a strange conversation with some very familiar voices. She sat up and instantly regretted it. If she hadn't already coughed up a lung, she did so then. Only when the fit subsided did she open her eyes. Dasha stood at her side, patiently holding a skin of water. Maya gratefully gulped it down, then looked around. They were in a building that could only have been the Smalese officer's building. Part of one of the walls was missing, and a tarp served as the roof. The other familiar voice was that of the lieutenant from intelligence. Exhaustion rimmed his eyes and his arm was in a sling like Dasha's. He smiled wanly at Maya, brandishing a piece of paper.

"I was reading PFO Nabiyev's report when the Elharibians attacked. If they know about this camp, and can reach us here, things are worse than we thought. I want to move ahead with the mission to the rug warehouse. It's risky, but we need large risks with larger payoffs at this point."

Maya nodded at him and signed to Dasha. Dasha translated, 

"What will Major-General Kazemi say?"

"The Major-General died in the attack," the lieutenant said shortly. "Colonel Sayd, who has replaced him, is more open to my idea."

"You've done a lot in one day," Dasha translated for Maya, then winced. 

"You've been out half of yesterday and all last night,” Dasha explained. “It's the day after the attack, Maya."

Maya dragged a hand across her face and slapped her cheek, trying to get her brain working. And what had she missed in that time? What had happened to Dasha while she was out?

"You're going to be a big sluggish from the smoke inhalation," said Dasha. "I'm not feeling too great myself. The lieutenant came and found me after you collapsed. He brought you here. You were lying on a pallet in the middle of the field with...everyone else."

Maya was glad she hadn't been awake for that; a muddy field filled with thousands of wounded or dying men. And Dasha had taken care of her. They took care of each other, Maya reminded herself.

“As soon as you recover, I want you and your squadron on this mission, Corporal,” the lieutenant said. He looked her straight in the eyes, like he would a male officer. Then he turned to Dasha and did the same. “You too, PFO. It was your report that let us know, and you’re the best-equipped intelligence officer we’ve got. Also, you’re a flier, so we can send one person to do two jobs.”

“My squadron was waiting on flying orders anyway, and I’ll be recovered soon,” Maya signed. “We can’t afford to wait, right?”

“I want a doctor to give you a full bill of health, but yes.” The lieutenant looked uncomfortable. “I hate to send you on this mission so soon. I think if we don’t, we’ll lose our chance. The tide is turning, and we want it to turn towards us. If your mission succeeds, we’ll be on our way to winning the war.”

“No pressure,” Maya signed, and the sign was so obvious and her expression so sardonic that the lieutenant laughed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  Maya and Dashas’ story will conclude in Ushistan: The Rug Road, Part 4.
> 
> So this one is a bit…dark? Which is one of the reasons it took me so long to write it. There’s only so many jokes you can make during a war. I do realize I’ve only myself to blame. I read Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein while writing this story, which is about a WWII concentration camp. Understandably, it kind of colored my mood. As such, sorry for the lack of humorous footnotes!


	7. The Court Ladies' Sewing Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taking a break from Maya but staying in the same region, our next stop is Tsort for a little political drama.

 

_“The ancient Kingdom of Tsort, historically one of the powerhouses of hubward Klatch, is now resting on the bones of its history…The crocodile-infested River Tsort bisects the country, providing a fertile if dangerous valley where the population make a living killing the occasional crocodile…” – The Compleat Discworld Atlas_

 

It was arguably the most important day of their lives, and they were going to be late. Not for any particular, spectacular reason, Roya lamented, just the usual circumstances to make a family with twin five-year-olds late.

She stood over her daughter Banu, wrestling with her thick hair as Banu sat on her stool and yowled. The maid was attempting to tie a sash around little Hashem’s waist and you would have thought she was tying a noose around his neck for all Hashem’s ducking and protests. All the while, Roya’s husband Ervin shouted up the stairs of their townhouse that they were running five minutes late, and didn’t anyone care that he was going to be late to his own Allegiance Swearing ceremony. Ervin Al-Siri had newly been appointed Prime Minister of all Tsort. And by extension, the whole Al-Siri family had their part to play in the upcoming years. Starting with today, being the perfect family in the audience as their husband and father knelt before the king and swore his allegiance for the remainder of his life. Long may he reign.

Roya performed the last twist of hair tie and smacked Banu’s bottom with the hairbrush as she jumped up.

“Ow!” Banu complained.

“That’s for carrying on like a drowning cat,” Roya said, shaking a finger. “Hashem, come here.”

She fairly snatched him away from the maid, completed the knot in the sash with a practice air, and grabbed both the twins by the hand.

“Azar, please keep packing,” she instructed the maid. “We’ll be back late. Be prepared to draw a bath for the twins in the morning. It’s going to be a long day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she heard on the wind before she hustled the twins downstairs, across the foyer, past their irate father, out the door, and into the waiting coach. The six-horse team stamped impatiently. Roya gathered they had been waiting for some time judging by what Ervin had been shouting up the stairs. She learned early on in their marriage to drown out whatever Ervin said when he was anxious. He was never in his right mind when he was worried. As he was such a level-headed man, it didn’t happen often.

They all fell onto the seats, Ervin with Hashem and Roya with Banu, as the coach rolled into motion. Ervin flicked open his pocket watch.

“With the current traffic, you will arrive at the temple at 12:01 pm, Ervin Al-Siri!” said the imp inside brightly.

“The rehearsal starts at 12:15, jewel of my heart,” said Roya sweetly. “I built in extra time.”

Point of fact, she’d told him the ceremony started at noon to get everyone out the door. She doubted it would work once the twins figured out what she was doing. Or her husband.

“You lied!” he accused, then followed up with a sarcastic, “oh doe of my eyes.”

“It won’t be a habit after today,” she promised. “Once you’re the Prime Minister, who would dare to lie to you?”

He put a hand on his chin and looked out the window. Despite the ceremony not starting until three, crowds were already gathering in the streets. There was so much hope riding on him. It creased at his eyes and greyed his hair, and it was only going to get worse. “Besides most of the government, you mean?”

“Obviously besides them.” Roya flicked her hand airily. “They’re a known quantity.”

The twins had had enough of the adults talking. It was time for everyone to focus on them. Hashem interjected,

“Mr. Said in the Little School says lying is bad.” He cocked a head at his father, his little eyes shrewd. “Do your friends at work lie to you, Daddy?”

His father seriously considered his question. “Is it a lie when you read a book about things that didn’t happen? Or watch a play?”

“Or steal some pies?” Banu added nastily, earning a Look from both her parents. They all knew she was referencing an incident that had gotten Hashem into trouble last week. Banu was known to steal the occasional sweet from the kitchen herself. Hypocrisy was a twin’s stock in trade.

“It’s not,” Hashem said, ignoring his sister, “since everyone _knows_ you’re lying.”

Ervin tapped his nose. “Exactly. When the people at work talk, I know they’re lying. I have to figure out what the moral is of the tale they’re trying to tell me.”

“Like in temple!”  Banu said, drumming her heels on the seat. “Mr. is always telling us stories that have morals.” She pulled at her hair, in danger of undoing Roya’s hard work. “I like the ones where Offler comes in and kills everyone the best.”

“Does he tell a lot of those?” Roya asked, alarmed at what version of the Book of Offler the children’s version of temple services used.

“No,” Banu said with disappointment. “We just hear the bishop shout them.”

“Ah, you can hear those through the walls,” Ervin said drily. “I thought you might be able to.”

The coach pulled to a stop outside the very same thin-walled temple. Besides its thin sandstone walls, the design of the building was gorgeous. It was the main Offlerian temple in all of Tsort, and many hands and brains had gone into giving it the proper gravity it deserved. It hadn’t been there all that long—Roya’s father had been a consultant on the geometric art.

While the outside looked like an ordinary-enough temple, albeit one with enough decorative stonework, arches, and domes to outfit several lesser temples, the inside was a marvel. The walls of the hallway started out as yellow closest to the door, frescoed patterns almost blending in with the hue of the sandstone. The closer one got to the sanctuary down the long hallway, the deeper the shade got, until it was a deep green, designed to mimic the scales of a crocodile. And the inside of the sanctuary…it still took Roya’s breath away, even after attending a weekly ceremony for years. The walls were painted the deepest green and encrusted in millions of pieces of glass. The lights were often kept dim, so as not to blind the congregants. The walls caught every glint of light and reflected it a thousand times over. Roya often thought it was like being inside an emerald.

She hoped it would be suitably impressive to the attendees of the Allegiance Swearing ceremony. Look, it would say, we’re not the backwards sheep’s eyeball-eating tribesmen you take us for. We have culture too. It was a misconception that Ervin had been fighting ever since he began his political career. Luckily, he did not have to convince many people. He only had to convince the king. Ervin could be an easy-going everyman one minute, and a ruthless politician the next. King Saroush liked his style and valued his levelheadedness. It hadn’t worked on Saroush’s father, but Ervin was playing the long game. He saw the prince, his own age, and the king, growing older every year, and it didn’t take a mathematician to solve that equation, with the equal sign pointing towards Ervin’s skyrocketing career.

Tsort had always been diverse, since people in the surrounding kingdoms moved easily between their neighbors*. Tsort boasted a growing population of Klatchians and Djelybeybians, but they hadn’t been reflected in their own government until King Saroush was crowned. He made it a policy to appoint Djelybeybian and Klatchian cabinet members, which was how Ervin Al-Siri ended up the first Klatchian-Tsort Secretary of the Interior. And now, the first the first non-Tsortean Prime Minister.

*Though it didn’t mean they _liked_ each other. Sometimes your neighbor was the person you hated the most. You could regard the people living far away in blissful ignorance.

Roya handed the twins off to Mr. Said, the teacher at the temple’s Little School, and went to oversee the rehearsal preparations. She and Ervin debated bringing the twins at all, but ultimately landed on the side of wanting them there to witness it. They were old enough to understand the significance, and old enough to remember the event when they got older.

King Saroush wasn’t going to be at the rehearsal. He was tied up at some morning event. Queen Amaya was there in his stead, and gave Roya a friendly wave as Roya sailed passed, shouting orders and arranging bouquets. The actual ceremony was only supposed to be a few minutes. It was rather like a wedding, especially in that the extraneous details and traditions were what made it so long. And so _stressful_. Roya met Ervin halfway through a circuit around the sanctuary to straighten his robes.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Enough for both of us,” she said.

“Enough for the whole temple, I should think.” He rolled his shoulders. “Thanks for taking it all. I feel great.”

Roya rolled her eyes. She was the one who was nervous because she’d planned it all. All Ervin had to do was kneel, have a scepter waved around his head, and say three lines of a speech.

After a rehearsal that went twice as long as it was supposed to, the crowds began to line up outside. Roya was too busy in the bathroom talking a temple maiden down from hysterics to worry until nearly everyone was seated. Then it was too late to see Ervin before the king arrived. She had a few last-minute words with the bishop, and took her place in the audience with the twins.

The ceremony went off without a hitch. Roya saw many necks in the crowd craning to get a full view of such a gorgeous space. She felt proud to have brought so many non-Offlerians into her temple to admire it. She had been the liaison between the bishop and the palace’s event-planning team. It could be her last of such tasks for a while, and she’d enjoyed it.

Despite how much she’d wanted Ervin to have this position, she wasn’t relishing the relinquishing of her place in the Trade Secretary’s office. Roya enjoyed her work there. No one had thought a follower of Offler would be so good at trading Tsort’s main export: crocodile skin. Roya didn’t kill them herself, and she got the best price she could for them, so she hoped Offler wouldn’t mind. She’d quit soon after Ervin was appointed Prime Minister to be a full-time politician’s wife. Offler give her strength and worthy tasks in the coming years.

Up on the dais, King Saroush touched her husband on each shoulder with the scepter and accepted holy water from the bishop to sprinkle on his head. That last bit was a Klatchian touch, and Roya’s eyes pricked with overwhelmed tears. This was really happening.

She joined the thunderous applause when Ervin rose and faced the people. His new badge of office gleamed around his neck. Try as she might, Roya could never quite see what others did in her husband. He was always the goofy, intense man she fell in love with. Today, just for an instant, as the gold seal reflected on his face, and the emerald light glittered around them, she thought she caught a glimpse.

The Al-Siris joined the royal family in their coach on the ride to the palace for the post-ceremony feast. Ervin and the king already sat deep in conversation in a corner.  Banu and Hashem, bless them, were squirmy after the long ceremony.

Roya’s eyes met the queen’s, who gave her a commiserating smile. Her own seven-year-old son, Prince Zana, had been excused from the ceremony but not from the feast. Though younger than the twins, he was already wearing the mantle of responsibility on his shoulders. Roya didn’t think she’d ever seen him playing, or even heard him laugh.

“I’m looking forward to having more children in the palace,” Queen Amaya said to Roya. “Prince Zana is turning into a solemn little man. It’ll be good for him to have playmates.”

The twins perked up at this.

“We get to play with the prince?”

They looked at each other.

“A boy!” Hashem exclaimed, and Banu wrinkled her nose at this take on things. It wasn’t as if Hashem was lacking for male company, either at home or at school.

“Yes, I think Prince Zana would be glad to have company,” smiled the queen. “If you can get him to play.”

Roya was pleased to see that at dinner, the children were taken off to eat in their own area, leaving her free to converse with everyone at the table. As it turned out, there wasn’t much conversing to be done. Ervin was seated to the right of the king, and Roya to the right of him. Aside from a few toasts and a word or two to Roya, Ervin continued his conversation with the king. She quietly fumed, unable to enjoy the Klatchian-Tsort fusion dishes, and leaving the Finance Minister’s wife, Lady Nasri, on her right to carry on most of the conversation.

She didn’t get Ervin alone until the dancing began. King Saroush and Queen Amaya had the first dance, and Roya and Ervin joined them when the musicians transitioned into the second song.

“You and the king are a perfect match,” she commented as their bodies swiveled to touch hands. “Tell me, when’s the wedding?”

Ervin rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry. The man has always been talkative. You try getting a king to shut up.”

They stepped together, then apart. When they came together again, Roya said frostily,

“I’m sure I could, seeing how much practice I’ve had with you.” Their legs lifted to perform the prancing steps. “From the sound of it, you were talking just as much as he was.”

“Let’s not fight about this,” Ervin said. He took her arm and spun her around three times, then lifted her up at the waist. “He’s just excited. He wants to get a lot done.” Ervin set her down and they performed the final steps. “One of the things we talked about was how much time we’ll give to our families. He has a son to raise too.”

Their requisite dances completed, the two most powerful couples in the land stepped off to the side and watched the dance floor fill. Ervin, perhaps deferring to Roya, did not immediately resume his conversation with Saroush. Roya seized her moment and said,

“Your majesty, I greatly enjoyed my work under my lord the Trade Secretary. I’d like to offer you my services and experience in trade and commerce, if you’ll have me.”

The king brightened. “Ah,” he exclaimed, “Wonderful. I was waiting for the right time to ask you. Her majesty may have a job for you. Amaya?”

Queen Amaya smiled across the group at Roya, and Roya saw her career crumble away from her like a cart falling off a cliff.

“I’ve heard a lot about your skills in the Trade Secretary’s employ. Would you please join me in my apartments tomorrow afternoon? It’s a little get-together with friends. Oh, and bring any embroidery if you’ve got it.”

“Embroidery?” Roya asked dully.

“Or knitting or darning.” The queen waved an elegant hand. “The meetings are informal, and we find it helps us to have something to do with our hands.”

***

“Well, did you expect him to appoint you to his cabinet?” Ervin whispered over the head of the sleeping Banu. The party had gone so late it was now early, and the exhausted twins had to be carried into the carriage.

“Eventually, yes!” Roya hissed. “You know that’s my goal. I don’t want my skills to be wasted. I just don’t see what I can get done with Amaya.”

“I thought you liked the queen.”

“I do. I wanted to work _with_ her, not join her sewing circle. Good gods.”

They carried the twins into the town house, even though Roya wasn’t certain Banu was asleep. Their entire house had been in disarray the last few days; piles of clothes and boxes everywhere. The Prime Minister’s family had an apartment in the palace, and they were moving in as soon as the previous minister’s things could be cleared away. Minister Jazani, who had only passed away two weeks ago, was a remnant of King Saroush’s father. Prime Ministers served for life unless they were fired by their monarch, which in the history of Tsort, was rare.* Practically everyone on Saroush’s cabinet had been playing the waiting game until Minister Jazani died, and when he did, there was no question who would be made Prime Minister. No one else wanted the job besides Ervin.

*Less rare were assassinations, which Roya tried very hard not to think about.

 Roya and Ervin helped Azar put the twins to bed, then staggered off to their own. Roya got about half of her finery off before collapsing on top of the comforter. Ervin kicked off his shoes and joined her. They stared at each other, both half-asleep, both still contemplating just how much things were going to change.

“I’m sorry about King Saroush,” he said. “I still think you have a good in with Queen Amaya. But I’ll advocate for you any way I can.”

“Thanks. You’d better,” Roya mumbled before she drifted off to sleep.

They got a late start the next morning. No one who was at the Allegiance Ball could be expected to wake up before 10 am. The twins were allowed to go to school late, because it was a miracle if they were going to get out the door at all. They had a new bodyguard team that had to be coordinated, which took even more time. Roya wanted them to have a few more days at school before they joined Prince Zana’s tutor at the palace. At least they would still see their friends at temple.

Ervin and Roya rode over to the palace together. Ervin had meetings – of course he did – and Roya brought some embroidery she hadn’t worked on since she was pregnant, as her queen commanded.

In the sober light of morning, Roya felt a little better about her prospects with Queen Amaya. If the queen was excited to spend time with her, then who was she to turn down the chance to bend the sovereign’s ear?

“I’ll join you for dinner every night,” Ervin promised, picking up their conversation at the ball. They so rarely saw each other that they could not waste time repeating things they’d already said, so often jumped straight into the middle of conversations. “His majesty will want to take my council, but he needs to spend time with his own family too. He and her majesty have yet to produce a second heir, and they won’t any time soon if he’s so busy.”

Roya thought of all the dinners that had already been missed when Ervin was Secretary of the Interior; the skipped family outings and late nights when Roya had only Azar to help her put the twins to bed. She looked levelly at her husband and said,

“I’ll hold you to that.”

They kissed each other goodbye at the palace and went to attend their separate monarchs. Roya was shown through the sumptuous royal apartments. Amaya must have had a thing for jewel tones; the place was like being inside a paint box. The servant brought Roya out onto a balcony covered in potted desert plants and succulents. They were high enough up to have a grand view over the city and, in the distance, the River Tsort sparkled in the sun.

Queen Amaya and her lady-in-waiting sat alone in a circle of chairs, bent over their own embroidery projects.

“Lady Roya Ervin Al-Siri, Your Majesty,” the servant announced, then inclined his head. “Shall I bring lassi?”

Amaya jumped up and came over to Roya. “Yes, please, Pahlavi, and the usual snacks.” She grabbed Roya’s hands. “Oh, Lady Al-Siri, I’m so glad you’re here early. Come, sit with Jaleh and I.”

Roya and Amaya met often enough at functions for cabinet members’ wives. It always struck Roya how young the queen was. Roya and Ervin waited to have children until their careers were well-established. Amaya, Roya remembered, had been chosen for the much-older King Saroush by his advisors because she was young, beautiful, and highborn.

Roya nodded at Lady Jaleh Turan as she sat. She, too, was married to a powerful man – a nobleman who owned much of the farmland around the river.

“Dear Jaleh is an astronomer and a poet,” said the queen, laying a hand on Lady Turan’s arm. “Since you’ll be living in the palace now, you’ll be able to come to our weekly stargazing sessions.” Amaya gestured to a brass telescope on the balcony’s railing Roya hadn’t noticed.

“And you are the best of us,” Lady Turan said in a husky voice to Roya. “The first female under-secretary! I’ve been following your career for a while, Lady Al-Siri.”

Roya blinked. She was not used to being introduced or recognized by her own merits. From the way people usually talked to her, her best merit was having married a successful politician, rather than being one herself.

“I’ve been supervising the packing of Minister Jazani’s things, may he rest in peace,” said the queen. “You can have a look at the apartment today, and let me know if you want the walls repainted. I’m sure you’ve furniture, but if you want anything fancier we’ve _scads_ of extras in the palace storage. People give us tables and chairs and credenzas, of all things, as gifts, and we’ll never be able to use them.”

The indulgent side of Roya flared. Outfitting her and Ervin’s townhouse as befitted a Secretary of the Interior had strained their budget, to say the least. Now she could get even better furniture for free?

“I’ll take you up on that,” she said with a smile.

Queen Amaya put her hands to her mouth pensively. “Now, staff. A few retainers come with the apartments, and I know you’re bringing your own maid, yes?”

“Correct,” said Roya firmly. She and Ervin were determined to keep Azar. She wasn’t “palace trained”, but the children loved her and she was of Klatchian descent like them. She didn’t deserve to be cast out.

“Jaleh, do you have that list I asked you to draw up?”

Lady Turan drew a piece of paper from the folds of her skirt and passed it over to Queen Amaya, who gave it to Roya with the explanation,

“We drew up a list of potential butlers, valets, and ladies-in-waiting for you and Lord Al-Siri.”

Roya unfolded it and saw the kind of spreadsheet she might have made for the Trade Secretary. Names were cross-referenced by background, amount of training, and…did that column say “personality”?

Queen Amaya pointed to a name, while Roya was still trying to process all the data.

“My top pick for butler is Haddad. He’s Klatchian-born and trained in Ankh-Morpork.”

Roya’s eyes found his “personality” column.

 _Likely to make dry comments about your outfit choices_ , it said. _But discrete._

Roya laughed. “I will have to peruse this further,” she said. “But he looks like a fine choice. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“I am an expert in household sciences,” Queen Amaya said airily. “And not much else. That is why is surround myself with people like you two.”

There were the sounds of footsteps, and before the servant even announced the next woman, Amaya jumped up and called,

“Sorri! I finished the book you loaned me!” She surged forward and kissed the Finance Minister’s wife, the one Roya had neglected in conversation at the ball, on the cheeks. “That ending, I thought I’d _die_! Do you have the next one?”

The elderly woman took her shoulders and said, “It’s not been published yet, my dear.”

“No!” The queen threw back her head and groaned dramatically. “How long must I wait?”

 Lady Soraya Nasri took a seat next to Roya and pulled some knitting out of a basket.

“Lady Al-Siri,” she said with a regal incline of her head. “I’ve been hoping you would join this group for some time.”

Roya flushed with pride. Lady Nasri did not hand out compliments lightly. Roya didn’t know how the woman knew her well enough to either approve or disapprove of her. Come to think of it, she didn’t know much about Lady Nasri herself. Just her husband. It was becoming a theme.

The rest of the women arrived in ones and twos until there were twelve of them, seated in a circle on the queen’s balcony. Roya was introduced to many fascinating women whom she’d seen around court but knew next to nothing about. There was another astronomer, a mathematician, a philosopher, and a bevy of poets. They were all titled except for one, and she was the most beautiful woman Roya had ever seen. She’d lugged in a mostly completed, rather frumpy crochet lap rug.

Roya hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the company of other women in the past few years. She was the only woman in the Trade Secretary’s office besides the tea girl. Here, she did not have to be on her guard from men who conveniently forgot she was married. But she could not relax. Queen Amaya had brought her here to prove herself. The other women were gossiping about books and Ephebian philosophy, and Roya felt a touch out of her depth.

Servants brought cold mint beverages, eggplant dip, lamb skewers, and fresh bread. When all the group was assembled and bent over their various fiber crafts – Roya struggling to remember where she’d left off on her embroidery five years ago – the queen said,

“Welcome back, everyone. Lady Roya Ervin Al-Siri is joining us for the first time, and hopefully for good if we don’t scare her away.”

The ladies tittered. Roya thought that if the conversation was as interesting as the company, she might have to return to these meetings after all.

Queen Amaya continued, “Now, Roya, what can you tell us about the new trade agreement with Ephebe? That must have been quite the coup, to get them to sign.”

Roya had to work to keep her mouth from dropping open. She’d started to get an idea of the caliber of the group as the women arrived, but even still, the question caught her off guard. The sewing really _was_ just something to do with your hands. This group wanted to discuss not just art and science, but politics. And probably not just theoretically.

“Well, uh,” she stammered, then cleared her throat and launched in. She was no longer out of her depth, she was in her element. “Many of Ephebe’s monuments have fallen into disrepair, and they’ve depleted all their quarries. The government’s finally focusing on infrastructure and repairing the roads, but they don’t want to source stone from their own temples to do it. Hence the agreement with us, to send them stone at a premium price. We don’t mind if stone gets sourced from _our_ monuments, they’re all unrecognizable anyway.”

“And what do we get from Ephebe?” Lady Nasri asked. “Aside from money.”

Roya put down her embroidery to tick off on her hands. “Wine, dairy products, gallons of olive oil, more philosophy than we know what to do with…plus a valuable alliance. Our store of allies has been somewhat depleted in the last few years. The countries along the Rug Road are busy with their silly war, so they won’t be any help.”

“Any help in case of what?” Queen Amaya asked. “Forgive my ignorance, but this is a time of peace for us, isn’t it?”

Lady Turan said drily, “There’s no such thing, especially not in Klatch. Any student of history will tell you that wars are a matter of technology. And look at the technology we’ve amassed in just the last few years. I’ve even heard a rumor—unsubstantiated, of course—that we’ll be seeing Clacks towers on our roofs any day now.”

All the women around the circle laughed; Clacks towers were a long time coming and were likely to remain so. If Ephebe didn’t have the infrastructure, then poor Tsort certainly didn’t. Though infrastructure tended to follow Clacks towers rather than the other way around, didn’t they? A three-person skeleton crew could assemble a Clacks tower, and would be scrambling up and down the platform in a matter of days. At that height, they were at an advantage to see the tide of the future racing towards them…an unbroken line of communication, stretching across the continent. Originating from Ankh-Morpork, of course. Anything modern seemed to arrive from Ankh-Morpork these days. But the missives themselves didn’t have to, Roya reminded herself. The words could be their own.

“The war on the Rug Road is being fought over trade as well,” Roya said. “What gets shipped where is going to be vital in the next few years. The world is growing, ladies, and Tsort must grow with it.”

She didn’t need to tell them. They all had their fingers on the pulse of the nation, whether through their husbands or their own information gathering. Something else was being discussed in the glances across the circle. Roya embroidered as she watched the wordless conversation, so fascinated she got distracted and stabbed herself with the needle.

Most glances were being sent not towards the queen, but the senior woman in the circle, Lady Nasri. When she nodded, that was when everyone looked to Queen Amaya. She cleared her throat.

“That is exactly what we needed to know, Lady Al-Siri. Your time in the Trade Secretary’s office has clearly not been wasted. My husband has been steadily replacing the members of his father’s cabinet, slowly enough that the old men have time to accept their fate.” She paused to let the women giggle. “But steadily enough. When the time comes for him to replace the Trade Secretary – and he will soon, believe me – the ladies in this circle will put their full support behind you as a nominee. My voice will be the first in Saroush’s ear.”

“And we’ll all be whispering in the ears of our own husbands,” said Lady Jaleh Turan.

“She must show not only us, but the king, what she can do,” Lady Nasri said. She looked at Roya over her beaked nose. Roya felt like she was back in college, her favorite hawk-eyed professor waiting for her to answer a question. “I heard you offer him your services outright. Kings are not used to people being so forward to get what they want. You must turn sideways, slip in, come at the problem obliquely. Only then will he understand.”

“That’s why he directed you to me,” said Queen Amaya excitedly. “He does this to test people. He trusts my judgment, you see. He’s put women in my service that he wants to test out before letting them enter the spy school.”

“Spy school?” Roya nearly dropped her embroidery. She realized she hadn’t worked on it for several minutes, and put the needle carefully in her lap. “I didn’t know we had a spy school.”

“You wouldn’t,” said the queen airily. Roya got the feeling she was about to become privy to many secrets, and doors, that had previously been closed to her. “Most of the spies are young women being taught the art of seduction. Many vital secrets have been uncovered by these ladies. But ah, Farideh can speak to that, can’t you?”

The woman of striking beauty Roya noticed earlier gave a little wave. “Most of us go on to become diplomats’ wives,” she said. “We do most of the work with our parties and tea ceremonies. Don’t tell the men.”

“What’s the next step for me?” Roya asked. “Now that you’ve decided to become my sponsor.”

“I am traveling to the Seriphate of Klatch, as the royal representative for the princess’s fifth birthday party,” said the queen. “I would like you to accompany me. There are a few little things Saroush would like us to accomplish while we’re there. Jaleh and I will go over the details with you later.”

Jaleh set down her knitting and clapped her hands. “With that done, who hasn’t read the _Principae_ yet? Farideh, I believe you had the copy most recently?”

The women settled into a discussion of a book whose contents Roya could not follow; something to do with mathematics and the movement of celestial bodies. She expected with enough time spent in these women’s company, she would understand. Just like she had come to understand Offler’s reason for putting her in the path of the queen. It was a windier path than she was expecting, but wasn’t the windiest path the best way to climb the mountain? Climb the mountain she would, all the way up to the shining peak. This hike was only just beginning. She’d put so many things on hold in the last few years: for her husband, for her children. Her career was always there, bubbling away on the back burner. Now it was time to pull it to the front of the stove and get cooking. She knew that she had something to offer her country, if she was just given the chance to serve.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been super into political fantasy lately, so I knew I had to write something with that flavor. (My top recommendations are The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, and the Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner, BTW.) I also wanted to write a mother character whose motherhood does not eclipse her character; and who has her own goals and ambitions.  
> I got into embroidery in the past few years, and now whenever I see female characters complain about doing it in fantasy, I roll my eyes. Embroidery is great!  
> The Offlerian temple actually exists in Iran, and is called the Shah Cheragh. Look up some pictures, it’s incredible.


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